


Fire in Our Bellies and Furtive Little Feelings

by Decepticonsensual



Category: The Transformers (Cartoon Generation One), The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 22:13:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 46
Words: 33,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2126451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Decepticonsensual/pseuds/Decepticonsensual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ongoing collection of short fics and occasional headcanons.  This one's got little bit of everything:  smut and gen, fluff and philosophy, lawmen and liars, DJs and deities.  Ratings and warnings vary widely from fic to fic, so please read the notes before each chapter!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Pursuit of Science (Brainstorm x Perceptor)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Frank Turner's "I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous".

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> gunthatshootsennui requested: "Brainstorm and Perceptor kissing! o3o" Rated PG, no warnings.

"One, you do not have a mouth," Perceptor intoned in calm voice - calm like the silence between the click of the safety coming off and the actual gunshot, "two, we are not currently in any form of romantic relationship, three, you are  _upside down,_ and four,  _no._ ”

"I have a mouth; why would you assume I don’t have a mouth?" Brainstorm complained, swaying slightly as he dangled from the ceiling.  "And I never thought I’d see the  _great_ Perceptor, the second-most famous scientist on Cybertron, afraid to go through with an experiment.”

Perceptor’s optics were murderous, and Brainstorm, suddenly aware of exactly how vulnerable he was in his current position, actually cringed when the other mech stepped towards him; but then there were long, dexterous fingers sliding around the sides of his helm, and Brainstorm barely managed to retract his mask before Perceptor’s mouth, warm and demanding, landed on his.

Brainstorm had the same dizzying, addictive feeling that marked the moment a chemical reaction in a test tube suddenly raced ahead of all his equations and spun off in a direction he would never have imagined:  as Perceptor slipped his glossa into Brainstorm’s startled mouth and kissed him in a way that was half lust, half punishment, Brainstorm reflected that this particular reaction might end up exploding, but the fireworks would be worth it.


	2. Gods and Monsters (Skyfire and Primus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> scribeprotra requested: "Skyfire/Primus ethical debate, please." This chapter is heavily influenced by the Marvel comics’ take on Transformers history, and the idea that Primus created Cybertronians to one day battle Unicron. Rated G, no warnings.

Skyfire’s voice was soft, but the venom in it was palpable:  ”You created us for war, split us into two kinds, and then left us alone - what did you  _think_ was going to happen?”

"Even if I had anticipated this," the holomatter avatar of their creator said gently, "I would not have intervened, for I made you free beings to determine your own path, not mindless automatons to die in my war."

"And yet you  _did_ make us to die in your war - you just let us bumble around killing each other first for - what?  practice?… or was it to assuage your conscience by letting you _think_  you were giving us a choice about what to do when the planet-eating abomination turned up?”

"Neither, my dear one," Primus murmured, and as the avatar slid two fingers under Skyfire’s chin and coaxed him to meet his optics, the planet itself - Primus’s actual body - thrummed with energy beneath them.  "It was to give my creations a chance to change and grow… into astonishing people like you."


	3. Rock Step (Soundwave x Jazz)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "Jazz seducing the shit of someone. Smut or not, whoever you want, with whatever method you wish." Rated PG, no warnings (except for "Contains Jazz" :)).

The sliver of space between Soundwave and the bar was barely wide enough to see daylight through, and yet the strange black-and-white mech had oozed into it like liquid, and now stood facing Soundwave, leaning back on his elbows (a necessity, to get enough room for that generous bumper) and casually sliding a slender leg between Soundwave’s.

There were a very limited number of things that a mech could say at that point to keep Soundwave from shooting him a lethal glare and stalking off, and this mech said one of them:  “That was one  _fine_ set you just spun, my mech; you’ve got a Pit of an audial for Polyhexian counterbeat.”

Smiling a little behind his mask, Soundwave replied, “Appreciated; counterbeat, your favourite?” and at the same moment took a sharp step backwards; the mech, who had been resting some of his weight against Soundwave, stumbled forward, but caught himself with a laugh.

“Guess you could say so,” he said, nodding agreeably and not seeming fazed by his near-spill; then his voice turned sultry as he boosted himself up to sit on the bar and purred, “but then, I’m partial to anything you can  _move_ to – ’course, I don’t imagine a big, burly bot like you would be much of a dancer.”

Soundwave stared disdainfully at the lithe black-and-white figure who had now drawn himself up to lie on his side on top of the bar, one hand tucked coyly under his chin, and said coldly, “Soundwave:  superior dancer,” only to watch the strange mech’s optics brighten and lips curve slowly into a smile.


	4. Delirium (Drift x multiple)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "Drift, prostitution, pre-war, when it was his way of paying for his drugs. Smut, definitively. It's probably not fun for him. I don't mind non-con, violence, at all."
> 
> Rated NC-17 for explicit sticky sex. Warnings for descriptions of addiction and consent issues. This is technically consensual, but Drift is desperate, not making good choices, and not happy about what he’s doing.

He’d left it too long; the lingering calm of his last hit had long faded by the time he’d steeled himself for what he’d have to do to afford the next dose, and now the shakes were beginning to set in, leaving his plating raw and oversensitised.  His vents felt smothered, the back of his throat was slick and sour with the scorched taste surging up from his empty tanks, and the epsomite-bitter taste of the spike thrusting in and out of his mouth made him whimper around the too-thick shaft, sent him cringing backwards - so that he impaled himself all the harder on the spike pounding his valve.

"Look how much he wants it," a refined voice purred above him, "the filthy little siphonist; yeah, you like us both filling you up until you’re ready to burst, don’t you?"

The other mech only grunted and, taking a brutal grip on Drift’s thighs - the rough touch felt so punishingly invasive that Drift tried to cry out, and only managed to choke on the spike fragging his throat - spread them even further, allowing him to slam the twitching valve.

Drift should have found these two before shooting up his last dose - fragging didn’t bother him once the circuit boosters hit his systems; nothing did - but Drift could never bear to let anything touch the sweet, sacred bubble of peace that enclosed him when he was high… and, as the first mech pulled out with a groan and Drift felt hot transfluid splatter his face, he let out a real sigh, knowing he’d be back in that bubble soon, where nothing could hurt him.


	5. What You Could Be (Optimus Prime x Prowl)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "Optimus Prime x Prowl". IDW-verse. Rated PG-13 for making out; no other warnings.

 

Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots, he can’t lash out at one of his subordinates, but he also can’t stand Prowl’s pretty, lying mouth one second longer, and so he shuts him up in the only way that remains to him.

And Prowl responds, mouth opening, clever glossa flickering over Optimus’s lip, because oh,  _yes,_ Prowl can use this to his advantage… and if a small part of him is shamefully grateful that for the first time in eons, Optimus is looking at him with something other than distrust or disappointment, Prowl ruthlessly crushes that part back down.

Optimus’s kiss is sweet (sweet and a little desperate), and when he breaks off, it’s to stroke Prowl’s face and run those big, capable hands roughly over his Second’s still-damp mouth, while Optimus murmurs little endearments.

Prowl feels a surge of anger -  _not your sweetspark, not your friend, not in wartime, aren’t you_ ever  _going to learn that? -_ and he kisses Optimus again, savage this time, shoving him against the wall and working his mouth hungrily.

It’s a long moment before Optimus finally pushes him away, sliding his battle mask back on to signal that this goes no further, and gives Prowl a terribly sad look; Prowl turns away before Optimus can see his expression, and when he turns back, he’s got his own mask back in place.


	6. Size Matters (Rodimus x Minimus Ambus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> abucketofprotons requested: "(Mini) Minimus Ambus x Rodimus. NSFW. Prompt: Trying to do the do when one of the participants has shrunk to like a fourth of their original size."
> 
> Rated NC-17 for doing the do. ;) Sticky, no other warnings.

It’s been a gruelling meeting, hashing out every detail of the new crew arrangements after the disaster on Luna-1, and Minimus is just standing and stretching before he goes to don the Magnus armour again when Rodimus’s soft voice stops him - “Don’t; not yet -” and suddenly there are hands running over his frame.  He’s always thought of Rodimus’s hands as small and sneaky, what with the way they can slip into Ultra Magnus’s seams and find the most sensitive wires to tease, but when they’re wrapped around Minimus in his original form, they’re broad and strong… and the contrast makes him shiver.

"Rodimus, while the sentiment is appreciated, we are not physically compatible while I am still  _urk_!” - and with an undignified squawk, Minimus finds himself lifted and plopped onto the captain’s desk, while Rodimus drops to his knees in front of him, bringing Minimus more or less optic-level with that infamous smirk.

"Trust me," Rodimus purrs, but there’s something breathless and almost needy under that sure tone; the rest of the statement comes out interspersed with licks to his panel that make Minimus squirm and whimper:  "we’ll make it -"  _lick “_ \- work; you’re too -”  _slurp_ ”- adorable like this -”  _lick_  “- and I’ve been with enough minis that I  _know -“_ and there’s Rodimus’s glossa snaking in ostentatious swirls over the hot metal ”-I can make you feel good.”

Minimus moans as his panel clicks open, and as good as those hands (not small, but still sneaky) feel wrapping around his shaft - as good as that glossa feels sliding into his wet valve, so thick that it’s like being spiked - the best part is that it’s  _Minimus,_ not his powerful alter ego, whom Rodimus is touching and lapping at like he can’t get enough.


	7. This Ain't A Scene, It's A Goddamn Arms Race (Verity, Sari, and Miko)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> specspectacle requested: "Verity, Miko, and Sari, with 'karaoke' as the prompt. :>" Rated G, no warnings.

In the end, Maccadam’s has to erect a tiny stage-onna-stage (not to mention sealing the place up and pumping in Earth atmo, since two of their guests are fully human and all three are happier singing if they can properly breathe), but most of the punters agree that it’s worth it. ****

Sari has the sweetest voice of the three, vibrant organic vocal cords given range and power by Cybertronian voice modulation, and she dances like a fiend, arms whirling and boots stomping.  Miko’s voice is rough around the edges - clearly not her primary instrument, and she’s in the process of convincing Blurr to let her play guitar sometime instead - but she’s still the musical powerhouse of the trio, her head tipping back and eyes drifting closed as she  _wails_ into the microphone, and eons-old war machines fall silent just to listen.  Verity is the first to admit that she’s not much of a singer, but she’s stage presence given form, lending an edge to their songs with her throaty growl as she struts across the stage like Vosian royalty.

Even Jazz, who is the universe’s pickiest connoisseur of music, never misses Maccadam’s Xeno Karaoke Night.


	8. Keeping Score (Brainstorm x Atomizer)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> gunthatshootsennui requested: "Brainstorm x Atomizer: playing badminton together!" Rated PG, no warnings.

Atomizer squints suspiciously at the smoking hole in the middle of his racket, and coos sweetly, “Brainstorm, you didn’t  _happen_ to replace the normal birdies with weaponised ones, did you?”

"No," Brainstorm responds with a huff, "I replaced  _some_ of them with weaponised birdies; how else was I going to get a random sampling?”

He folds his arms and lifts his chin even as Atomizer closes in on him, growling, and pushes him up against the wall, Brainstorm’s wings scraping roughly over the metal.

"That," Atomizer hisses in his audial, his hands starting to rake eagerly down over Brainstorm’s plating, "is the hottest thing I have ever heard."

The rest of the badminton game does not get finished, although Atomizer jokes that they’re at Love All until Brainstorm sleepily threatens to smack him.


	9. And For Whatever May Come After (Vehicons)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lizwuzthere requested: "Vehicons!" Rated G; some vague discussion of post-battle trauma.

It’s a tradition that evolved over the long eons of having scant few medics, or none at all, and although Knock Out is good at his job, he’s only one mech, so there remains an unspoken agreement that the med bay should be reserved for the worst cases after a battle.

That’s how most of the Vehicons end up in the common room like this each time, sprawled in a circle, tending to each other - a daisy chain of minor welding jobs and help with recalibration and simple, soothing polishing for those who weren’t injured at all, but need that grounding touch to get past the battle shakes.  Someone always produces a bottle of engex from a hidden stash (and it’s been the real deal, too, ever since they came to Earth, not synthesised moonshine anymore); someone else will bring the cards out, and a couple of the older mechs will start humming as they work, Decepticon battle marches older than the organic race that inhabits this world.

Most of the Vehicons settle after an hour or two of repairs and gentle attention, as a pleasant fog of relief blurs the sharp edges of battle lust and terror; they start to slip away back to their barracks in ones and twos, or start their shifts, and the day of battle becomes a normal day again.  A few of the rookies, however, still aren’t used to it:  they take ages to go down, and when they finally do stop trembling, they turn strutless and whimpering, which is why a handful of the scarred-up old veterans always stay with them, letting the sparklets drape across their shoulders and laps as the old mechs sing songs of war, and pretend they aren’t lullabies.


	10. Unanticipated (Rung x DJD)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> abucketofprotons requested: "Rung x DJD. Prompt: Rung takes his glasses off. :o" Rated PG, no warnings. (Except for, "Oh no, he's handsome.")

In the same way that everyone remembers where they were when, say, Nova Prime’s death was announced and the world changed forever, each of the members of the DJD will forever remember where they were and what they were doing the day Rung first took off his glasses.

Okay, so it’s not _that_ difficult, as they were all on the bridge of the _Peaceful Tyranny,_ half-listening as Tarn - using his second-most seductive berthroom voice, the one that felt like it was pouring over your spark like warm engex - to lecture Rung, once again, on the rightness of the Decepticon Cause, when Rung reached up and removed his specs to pinch the bridge of his nose.

The quick flicker of surprise they all felt at learning the glasses were detachable turned to a shock so profound that Tesarus dropped the scanner he’d been using to help Kaon recalibrate the forward scanners (and the communications officer didn’t even snap his coils in irritation at him), because when Rung lifted his head, his weird, nebbishy cuteness had been replaced by matinee idol features and optics so spark-stoppingly blue that an invisible chorus of angels began to sing.

"Do excuse me," Tarn coughed, hastily switching off the recording of the chorus that his music systems had somehow turned on by themselves; Helex’s acid burbled embarrassingly, while Tesarus stared, Vos garbled static, and even Kaon’s radar imaging system threatened to short-circuit as it scrambled to reclassify the mech on its grid from "potentially of interest" to "FRAG THIS NOW!"

Rung looked around mildly (leaving each of the DJD weak at the knee actuators) and then dipped his head to slide his glasses back on, ignoring the disappointed sighs to say, “I know, I look hopelessly odd without them -” which was as far as he got before Tarn placed a massive finger on Rung’s lips… and reached up to slowly tug the glasses off again.


	11. Lockout (Rung x Ratchet)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> abucketofprotons requested: "Rung x Ratchet. Locked out of their rooms." Rated G, no warnings.

Rung waited until Ratchet stopped kicking the door to his quarters and muttering to himself long enough to actually notice him, and then gave the CMO a rueful little smile and asked, “You, too?”

"Fragging Brainstorm; one of his experiments triggered an alarm and the whole ship’s on automatic lockdown," Ratchet growled, before catching sight of Rung’s expression and hastily adding, "but it’s all under control this time - we’re talking a technical failure, Rung, not another sparkeater incident, trust me."

Relieved, Rung flopped on the floor and took a packet out of his subspace, offering brightly, “Rust stick?”

Between the candy and swigs from Ratchet’s hidden flask, they passed a companionable hour waiting for lock access to come back online, and Ratchet spun tales of his days in the secret Dead End clinic while Rung rested his elbows on his knees and listened.

"You’re a good mech, Ratchet," he said quietly, and when Ratchet gruffly protested that that wasn’t the point of the story, Rung put a hand on his and murmured, "I know… but I still think you need to hear it."


	12. The Best of Bad Ideas (Rodimus x Drift)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> rodimiss requested: "For your minifics, can I request Rodimus/Drift and something happy, please?" Rated G, no warnings except Rodimus being Rodimus. :)

It had, technically, started off as another sword lesson, or at least that was what Drift told himself, but by the time they were whirling the sword around Rodimus’s quarters - Roddy laughing giddily as he sliced up imaginary Decepticons and Drift plastered to his back, less guiding him than holding on, trying to smother his grin against Roddy’s shoulder - any techniques being practiced were the stuff of adventure vids, and Drift couldn’t even bring himself to care.

Rodimus finally collapsed in a sated heap against the wall, chuckling - but Drift noticed that he was careful not to bump the sword against the bulkhead, and handed the blade back to Drift as reverently as ever, telling him,  ”Okay, I surrender:  you win joint coolest weapon.”

"Just  _joint_ coolest?” Drift asked, sheathing the sword and dropping down easily beside him; he draped over his captain, curling against his side and relishing the feel of Roddy’s plating cooling under his cheek - these moments always felt almost too sweet to trust, like the release of battle without the battle.

Rodimus lifted an arm lazily, flashing the flame jets on the back of his rebuilt hand:  ”Can’t swing a sword if you’re on fire, Drift.”

Then he sat bolt upright, and Drift met his fervent optics, and words  _flaming sword_ seemed to hover between them without being spoken, until Rodimus breathed, “We  _shouldn’t_ ,” and Drift grinned and said, “Terrible idea,” and they raced each other all the way to Brainstorm’s lab.


	13. Pageantry (Starscream)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sephirose requested: "Starscream. Self-love. Smut plz." Rated NC-17, sticky, masturbation; warnings for relatively mind pain play/masochism.

Knees splayed, back arched, sensitised wings spread so taut and wide that the whisper of air across them made them throb; even alone, Lord Starscream did like to put on a show.

His panel drew back with teasing slowness, raking over the pressurising head of his spike and making Starscream hiss in savage appreciation.  His spike was straining, leaking transfluid sloppily, but that would keep; first, Starscream slipped two clawtips just inside the edge of his valve and took his time seeking out every one of the well-mapped nodes inside, relishing the obscene, liquid sound as his fingers moved.  Vents stuttering, he imagined heated optics watching him from the shadows as he plunged a third claw in, then a fourth, and began to frag his valve roughly, swirling his fingers at the apex of each thrust to graze over rarely-touched sensors; occasionally, the sharp metal would nick him and he’d gasp at the sting, moan as it settled into a steady burn.  

Legs shaking, Starscream flopped onto his back at last (a manic grin flickering over his mouth as he pretended he’d been thrown down), and, as he closed his free hand over his spike, he started whispering the filthiest suggestions he could think of, half-drunk on the feel of his own hands and the thrill of those words passing his lips.


	14. The Processor and the Spark (Ultra Magnus x Rodimus x Drift)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "Ultra Magnus/Rodimus/Drift - dealer's choice in all respects." Rated R, no warnings.

The first time - and the next time, and the time after that - it was Rodimus in the middle, the captain being taken care of by his loyal officers, because that’s the only way Ultra Magnus can justify it in his head… and because Magnus might trust Drift a  _little_ more these days, but he’s still skittish about letting the ex-Decepticon within striking distance (which adds a shameful prickle of excitement to the glances he and Drift share across Rodimus’s thrashing form when they’re conspiring to get their captain to moan wantonly between them).

Then came the Nanocon infection and Ratchet’s undignified cure, and now Magnus and his wounded pride have been avoiding company for twenty-seven days - which is exactly how Magnus corrects Rodimus when the Duly Appointed Enforcer enters his office to find the captain sprawled seductively on his desk, pouting and cooing, “Magnus, we haven’t seen you in a  _month._ ”

Rodimus, it turns out, cares shockingly little (if it were still possible for anything Rodimus does to shock Ultra Magnus) about the precise time frame, and instead rolls up to his knees and eagerly wraps one arm around Magnus’s neck, kissing him in teasing little bursts, while the other hand snakes down to tantalise the wires above Magnus’s hip - and that’s when Magnus spots Drift watching uncertainly from the corner, and stiffens.

Feeling Magnus’s sudden reluctance, Rodimus breaks off and turns, beckoning his third-in-command forward; Drift follows, stopping with one hand on Rodimus’s chest and the other hovering just shy of touching Magnus, and Drift’s optics are wary, but hungry - not the feral hunger of Deadlock, but Drift’s hunger, solemn and pleading - and this time, he’s looking not at Rodimus writhing under Magnus’s hands, but right at Magnus himself.

Ultra Magnus finds himself shivering as he reaches to caress an ear finial, and notices with a stab of gratification the way Drift leans into the touch… and then Rodimus is turning Magnus around, twining his arms around him from behind to hold him still for Drift, and Drift is nuzzling against his chest, wet mouth open on the plating over Magnus’s spark, and warm as a live grenade in Magnus’s arms.


	15. Student Teacher (Drift x Wing)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> onigil requested: "Drift(/)Wing, sweetness and light, and that is EXACTLY as sarcastic as it sounds." This one is sort of on the PG/PG-13-ish line; little bit of consensual roughness, but nothing explicit.

Things had started out so  _well_ \- Drift straddling Wing’s lap and digging his fingers into the tempting gaps in that pristine armour; Wing seizing Drift around the waist and flipping them over so that he was pinning Drift, holding him down while shooting him a dark smile full of promise - and then Wing had just  _stopped._ Stopped everything except for the most feather-light touches, white fingertips tracing Drift’s helm and cradling his face, as Wing murmured, “Shhh, shhh, slow down… beautiful, you’re so beautiful, my sweet Drift…”

Drift squirmed:  the soft touches  _itched_ , and the whispered endearments had him growling in frustration until he shoved Wing off (and Wing, still with that infuriatingly indulgent expression, let him go) and snarled, “I’m not a sparkling, I’m not made of crystal, and I’m not a slagging  _Autobot,_ Wing.”

"I never said you were," Wing soothed, "but it doesn’t have to be so brutal, my bright spark; it doesn’t have to be yet another part of your war - we can take care of each other."

He watched, but didn’t move away, as Drift’s hand crept slowly forward to wrap around the cables of his neck; not squeezing, just holding him there, loosely and warmly, as Drift’s other hand went to caress a wingtip with almost taunting gentleness, and he whispered against his captive’s audial, “This is the kind of care  _I_ want, and if you want me,  _then learn._ ”


	16. Weird Science (Brainstorm x Nautica)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "Brainstorm/Nautica - Clumsy in Each Other's Presence". Rated G, no warnings.

Brainstorm isn’t some gearstick-in-the-rust obsessed with the kinds of things Perceptor so fixates on, like “rules” and “procedures” and “things not being on fire”, but there’s a difference between taking bold risks for SCIENCE! and just inexplicably tripping over his own feet, and the latter seems to be happening with distressing regularity lately.

Right now, he’s managed to dump out an entire tray of beakers to shatter on the lab floor, simply because he turned around and happened to catch sight of Nautica, triumphant grin and plating covered in grease, stepping back smugly from the now-functional autoclave that should have taken even the most skilled technician three times that long to fix, and, okay, maybe the restored light from the autoclave has the effect of deepening the blue of her optics, but this sloppiness is still unworthy of a genius of his calibre.

Nautica stoops to help him pick up the glass, and Brainstorm keeps his head down and cleans up with brutal efficiency - the sooner this embarrassment is over, the sooner they can get back to doing SCIENCE! together - until his hand accidentally bumps Nautica’s, and they both spring apart and scramble to their feet, Nautica backing up hurriedly as she blurts out, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, that was my -“

"Watch out!" Brainstorm shouts as he realises that she’s about to walk backwards straight into half a dozen percolating vials of acid, and he lunges - flyer’s reflexes; take  _that,_ oh mighty sniper Perceptor! - and catches her clumsily around the waist, tugging her towards him and out of danger.

They both stumble, but manage to right one another, and Nautica’s vents nearly stall at the heat of Brainstorm’s plating so close to hers; she ventures, “Um, hi,” and gets a breathy “hi” in response… and then it’s a long time before either of them think to pull apart.


	17. Sweet Nothings, Decepticon Style (Frenzy x Cliffjumper)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Datcosmosaft requested: "Frenzy/Cliffjumper where they're cuddling while still passive aggressively bickering to each other about the others faction :>". Rated PG-ish for vague mentions of sex, no warnings.

It was always like this, afterwards:  minibot and cassette sagging in each other’s arms in whatever secret corner where they’d managed to steal an hour away together, the only sounds the crackle of subsiding electricity and the occasional pings of cooling metal… and then it would start.

"If you Autodorks fought half as good as you frag," Frenzy murmured sleepily, small hand rubbing over Cliffjumper’s Autobrand, "you might have a shot at beating us one day."

"What d’ya mean, a  _shot_ \- we’ve had you beat cold since we got to Earth!” Cliff groused, but his arms tightened around the little ‘Con, fingers fitting snugly against the dip of that sleek waist.

Frenzy snorted, half asleep already:  ”Yeah, I guess you guys lost Cybertron ‘cause you were still gettin’ warmed up for the _real_ fight.”

Cliff opened his mouth to retort, but then Frenzy’s fingers settled on his horns and started rubbing in soothing, delicious circles, and Cliffjumper made an undignified sound and contented himself with squeezing the cassette tight.


	18. Surprises (Swerve x Skids)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "Skids and Swerve. Skids being extremely gay." Rated PG-ish, no warnings.

It was stupid, Swerve reminded himself, as he locked up the bar and gave a cheery smile to the last few patrons wandering home (Jackpot, this time, lurching badly as he tried to navigate the hallway, with Hound steadying him on his left and Whirl pretending to steady him but actually subtly trying to push him over on his right) – no one celebrated creation days anymore, not since the war started, so it was stupid to feel stung that no one had remembered his.

Or so he thought, at least, until he keyed in the security code to his door, and was met with a table bursting with crystalline flowers and plates of sweets, as soft music played and light spheres hovered, giving everything a rosy glow.

“Where the frag did this all  _come_ from?” he asked breathlessly, jumping a bit when a kiss brushed over the back of his neck; long, dexterous hands wrapped around his thick little waist, fingers eagerly stroking the plating there.

“Did a little shopping on Hedonia, and a couple of guys owed me favours – do you like it?” Skids purred against his audial, his hands pausing in their exploration of Swerve’s frame, and Swerve felt his spark throb at the realisation that, in spite of his suave composure, Skids  _actually_ sounded nervous when he asked that question.

“I  _love_ it, are you kidding?” Swerve yelped, turning in Skids’ arms to crane up and kiss him; he was convinced that the night couldn’t get any better, until Skids perched him on the end of the bed with a plate of goodies and a cube of high grade, telling him to relax and watch, then switched on a sultry beat from Polyhex, winked, and began to dance.


	19. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Wheeljack x Sunstreaker)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "What about Sunstreaker/Wheeljack? Literally anything would be good." Rated PG; no warnings except for horrifically unresearched technobabble. :)

“It’s a localised positronic field generator with full cybermetric matching ability,” Wheeljack beams as he presses a tiny device, no bigger than an energon goodie, into Sunstreaker’s palm.

It’s lucky that he’s learned to speak some Wheeljack over the years, Sunstreaker thinks, as he asks aloud, “It’s a personal force field?”  At Wheeljack’s eager nod, he sighs lightly and adds, “I appreciate the thought, Jacky – but the whole  _point_ is that I’m fast enough that no one can so much as smudge my finish, so this would feel… well, a little like cheating, you see?”

“Oh, no, I gotcha, that makes sense,” Wheeljack blurts out, but he looks so crestfallen that Sunstreaker can’t help but reach out and wrap an arm around his waist, drawing Wheeljack close enough that he can lick one of those sensitive audial fins (a sweet spot they both share), which produces a gratifying shiver.

“Besides,” Sunstreaker growls, digging clever artist’s fingers into the wiring at Wheeljack’s hip, “I’ve got the best mechanic in the world to pound out the digs and polish me up after battles, and I’m not giving that up… not when I can think of such…  _inventive_ ways to thank him for it.”


	20. One, Two, Three, Jump (Dominus Ambus x Rewind x Chromedome)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> specspectacle requested: "Dominus/Rewind/Chromedome with 'jump' as the prompt, please?" Rated PG for robo-smooching, no warnings.

Rewind jumped – because Rewind always does things he shouldn’t – and the next thing they know, he and Chromedome (because Chromedome can’t help but follow) are through the mysterious portal and four million years in the past, face-to-moustache with a Dominus Ambus who only recently left Rewind behind to embark on the mysterious mission from which he isn’t going to return.

The first thing Rewind does is wrap himself bodily around every bit of Dominus he can reach, relishing the warm  _aliveness_ of Dominus’s plating, but the reunion isn’t going as he dreamed it would:  Dominus is shocked and clearly hurt when Rewind explains who Chromedome is, and Chromedome, for his part, is shrinking back with that painful diffidence Rewind hates watching, as if he’s already resigned himself to Rewind preferring Dominus over him.

So Rewind jumps – because Rewind always does things he shouldn’t – and suggests that unusual circumstances call for equally unusual measures:  since a fluke of time travel means they’re technically both his  _conjuges,_ well, he may be small, but there’s enough of him to go around, you know?

They’re both shocked, but Dominus is the first to recover, the first to reach out; Rewind tenses, worried about how Chromedome will feel about seeing them kiss, but he’s underestimated his first  _conjunx_ , who reaches _past_ Rewind to caress Chromedome’s cheek, and bends to press a chaste kiss to the startled mnemosurgeon’s mask.

“You are both from a different time,” Dominus rumbles in that voice that always made Rewind’s struts melt, “a time when you belong to one another, and I will not interfere if you do not wish it… but I would dearly love to get to know the mech who has earned Rewind’s devotion,” and when Dominus leans forward again, Rewind is delighted to see Chromedome’s mask retract, and hear the soft, staticky moan as Dominus’s lips meet his.


	21. Old Flames (Red Alert x Inferno)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "IDW Red Alert/Inferno angst?" Spoilers for MTMTE up through Dark Cybertron; no warnings.

Inferno didn’t want to let him go, off into the dark; into unmapped spaces, alien incursions, unimagined threats, and all the things that have left Red shivering in his arms before now.  But Red Alert insisted – not because he  _wanted_ to go, Inferno knew, but because Red has always placed duty above all, and protecting a ship full of (mostly) Autobots from external threats seemed like a cleaner duty than the grey swamp that politics on Cybertron had become.  So they spent one last night together, Red Alert’s hypersensitive audial muffled against the warm plating of Inferno’s chest, letting his mate’s sparkbeat drown out all the threatening whispers in the dark… and then Red kissed Inferno goodbye and got onboard the  _Lost Light,_ and the  _Lost Light_ promptly exploded.

And now, that damned, miraculous ship has appeared above Cybertron as if it never vanished, and Inferno feels as though his plating is going to burst open – first there’s the wild, awful hope, then the despair when he realises that Red Alert isn’t aboard, and then the giddy relief when Magnus explains that Red is fine, he’s just off policing the galaxy, safe in the company of Duly Appointed Enforcer Fortress Maximus.

That’s good, Inferno tells himself sternly,  _good_ that Red’s found a purpose that suits him, good that he’s found another big, powerful, reassuring bot to tell him that things will be all right when he’s having trouble seeing it, it’s what they both wanted for him… and Inferno can’t quite silence the whisper that says that if he were better at being that bot, Red would have wanted to come home.


	22. Unreliable Narrators (Deadlock x Ratchet)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warlordenfilade requested: "I'd like Deadlock and Ratchet, just after Drift/Deadlock joined the cons, dealer's choice for smutty, romantic or non romantic." Rated G, slight violence.

Ratchet knows that voice:  it’s throatier now, commanding, no longer buzzing at the edges with the soft afterstatic of circuit boosters – but even filtered through the acrid smoke streaming from the hole in the hospital wall, it’s unmistakable.

“Pack up the supplies, and bring me the three patients on this list; any of the others can join us if they…” and with that, the invader trails off; Ratchet ducks around a corner, hiding his face, but it’s too late, and he winces as that all-too-familiar voice, suddenly sounding almost as young as he remembers, gasps, “Doc?”

Hands are spinning him around, gripping him by the shoulders, and he finds himself confronted with a face he recognises, even though it’s changed more than the voice has (starker paintjob, red optical lenses in place of gold); the mech is grinning wide, gushing, “Doc, it  _is_ you, you saved my life – do you remember? – and you told me I was special; I’ve never stopped thinking about that, and now look what I’ve –”

Ratchet has never in his life slapped a patient, but this one isn’t his responsibility – not anymore – and he hauls off and strikes him hard across the face, shouting, “Damn it, Drift, do you think that I meant  _go out and blow up some hospitals_?”

The mech slowly raises a hand to swipe at the energon seeping from the corner of his mouth, and his lip curls into a feral smile as he looms closer and murmurs, “So you do remember… but it’s  _Deadlock_ , now.”


	23. Lesson (Soundwave x Starscream)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> baiku requested: "Starscream/Soundwave, cake+lesson+SMUT". Rated NC-17, sticky, consensual bondage, foodplay obviously ;)

If Starscream’s smile were any more acid, it would have dripped from his lips and burned a hole in the floor, as he cooed, “Soundwaaave, far be it from me to question your  _powerful_ intellect, but why bother tying me up if you aren’t going to  _damn well frag me already_?”

"Restraints, instructive:  Starscream, needs to learn patience," Soundwave intoned, unwrapping a tiny high-grade-infused petit four dripping with gooey pink syrup; Starscream’s optics followed it curiously, turning hungry when Soundwave held it up and let the syrup drizzle down over his own chest glass.

"Clean it," Soundwave ordered, straddling him, and Starscream lunged forward, tugging at his bonds as he lavished his glossa over the sticky trail, working from there down to Soundwave’s abdominal plating… only to be stopped by a rough grip on his wing, pulling him backwards, and a toneless, "Cease; Starscream will go only where instructed."

He ignored the answering snarl and held Starscream in place until he slumped sullenly, wings dipping and the tension in his restraints finally relaxing, and then Soundwave let a few fat globs of syrup drip onto his pelvic array, sliding obscenely down over his buttons, and gave the order to proceed.

By the time Soundwave finally opened his panel and nestled the tiny cake teasingly at the entrance to his valve, moving so that he was hovering right over Starscream’s face, the seeker was practically trembling, a thin whine escaping his vents - but he stayed perfectly still until Soundwave gave the word, and Starscream struck, demolishing the cake before starting to lap at Soundwave’s valve like a starving mech.


	24. Constrictions (Rewind x Chromedome)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "Chromedome/Rewind, "squeeze", smut". Rated NC-17, sticky, top!Rewind.

Rewind threw his head back and  _shrieked_ at the feeling of Chromedome’s valve squeezing his spike tight, rippling slowly from the base to the tip; Chromedome had his calipers dialled down so small that every time he rose up on his knees, Rewind’s spike felt as though it were being dragged out of him, and every time he dropped back – driving his hips down hard and slow to meet each one of Rewind’s desperate thrusts – it was like Rewind was battering his way into that snug, wet heat.  Chromedome was so careful never to rest his full weight on him, but Rewind still loved the warm clunk of Chromedome’s body against his, the pressure that sparked a tense knot of arousal in his belly… and the view:  Chromedome’s lithe form undulating in long waves above him, plating dripping condensation and bared mouth whispering, pleading.

“Aww, yeah, just like that, Domey,  _just_ like that, you’re so damned good at this,” Rewind panted, and Chromedome managed a staticky chuckle before breaking off into a groan; his hands were braced on either side of Rewind, needles digging heedlessly into the berth.

“Want to feel you overload in me,” Chromedome grated out, picking up his pace enough that Rewind wailed and started writhing underneath him, little feet digging furrows in the mattress, as he tried against all logic to push up harder, deeper, as if he wanted to crawl inside Chromedome’s plating.  It wasn’t long before overload took him, arching his body like a bow, as he dug his fingers into Chromedome’s hips and pulled him down flush against him, holding him in place as Rewind’s transfluid spurted hot into his valve, and Chromedome brokenly whispered his name.


	25. Bad Case of Loving You, Part I (Ratchet x Pharma)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "For the prompt thing, Ratchet and Pharma on a first date?" Rated G, no warnings.

Ratchet didn’t like admitting, even to himself, exactly how much work he’d put in to prepare for this – how much buffing and polishing (nothing ostentatious, but enough to make him look distinguished, or so he hoped), how many drives home spent rehearsing possible conversation topics in his head – until he stepped into the restaurant and caught sight of the stunning jet at the corner table, and had to admit that however much he’d done, he still felt terrifyingly underprepared; it suddenly occurred to him just how many ways there might be to screw up a promising new romance with the colleague he’d been making moonstruck optics at longer than he cared to remember.

Pharma favoured him with an unreadable smile when Ratchet sat down opposite him, and politely fielded the CMO’s nervous inquiries about his latest research project for a few minutes, until – tipping the last of his cube down his throat in a single, long swallow – he remarked, “Don’t tell me you asked me out here to talk shop, Ratchet, or I just might scream.”

 Now  _that_ sounded like the Pharma Ratchet knew, and he immediately groused back, “Yeah, don’t pretend you ever get tired of talking about that damned project,” with a slag-eating grin that showed he didn’t mean a word out of it, before glancing down and murmuring, “You’re right; it’s not your work I’ve been thinking about all day, it’s _you_.”

Pharma’s optics flared bright, and Ratchet impulsively reached across the table and took his hand, gently tracing the lines of Pharma’s palm with his thumb, making those heady blue optics go half-lidded as a soft purr arose from Pharma’s engines.  Pharma’s other hand crept teasingly up to Ratchet’s collar, then playfully nudged the tip of his chevron with one knuckle, as he whispered, “That’s more like it, Doctor,” and the shiver that went through Ratchet at the tickle of Pharma’s warm ventilations against his plating had nothing to do with fear.


	26. Bad Case of Loving You, Part II (Ratchet x Pharma)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "Ratchet/Pharma. In a good relationship with good sex, smut please? Ratchet on top?" I didn’t end up including the Ratchet-on-top bit exactly (sorry!), but we do get some aggressive Ratchet. ;) Rated NC-17; sticky sex, oral, no warnings.

They tumbled onto the berth together, Ratchet landing on the bottom with an “oooof”, Pharma sprawled across him, languidly tracing the seams on Ratchet’s shivering abdomen with devilishly clever fingertips.

The second that Pharma’s wandering hand found the edge of Ratchet’s panel and clicked the manual release there – there was something to be said for dating a medic – Ratchet’s head fell back to the berth with a thump, his body arching and hips wriggling eagerly into Pharma’s touch, but he still managed enough presence of mind to find and tweak the slats of Pharma’s vents, drawing a startled, pleased gasp from the jet.  “Sly old fragger,” Pharma growled, stretching to kiss Ratchet, even as those talented fingers dipped into Ratchet’s valve, then teasingly dragged up the underside of his spike, wetting it with his own lubricants… followed a moment later by the slick heat of Pharma’s glossa.

Ratchet bit his lip to keep from begging; Pharma’s mouth always undid him (whether it was talking or wrapped around his spike, he thought ruefully), even without the delicious stretch of those fingers working in his valve.  Overload broke what remained of his control – “Yes,  _Pharma,_ I’m – never stop, you feel so –  _frag_   _me_  – PHARMA!” – but once his ventilations steadied, he shot Pharma an evil grin and lunged, pinning the jet’s legs wide open and swallowing his spike, engine revving as he listened to Pharma cry out for him, that elegant voice begin to fray into static at the edges.


	27. In the Court of the Emperor of Destruction (Strika x Megatron x Optimus Prime)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "If you're still accepting prompts could I request Transformers Animated Strika x Megatron x Optimus Prime please?" Rated PG for suggestiveness, no warnings.

Megatron’s General towered over him almost as much as he himself did over Optimus, and yet the warlord never looked the slightest bit intimidated, lounging in Strika’s lap as if it were a throne, his wicked grin discreetly half-hidden by the glass of vintage highgrade he was sipping.  Optimus watched them from where he knelt on the floor, his head pillowed lazily against Strika’s thigh and Megatron’s fingers caressing his helm almost lovingly.

“My loyal soldier,” Megatron purred, setting Strika’s engines rumbling, “and my clever little Autobot pet.”

“I have a  _name_ ,” Optimus protested, then broke off, flushing hot; Megatron’s dark, gravelly voice had made his fans kick on audibly, causing the Decepticon leader’s smile to widen even further.

“Of course you do,” he murmured as he curled a finger and tilted the Autobot’s chin up, running his thumb over those plush lips, “Optimus Prime.”


	28. Pet (Kaon x Ratchet)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jenn-oddballpunk requested: "Oh ho? So you're taking quick prompts? *wiggles eyebrows* Could I tempt you for a short masterKaon/petRatchet?" Rated PG-ish, consensual cross-factional BDSM.

“Such a good pet,” Kaon sighed – a dangerous sigh, laced with the crackle of electricity, but pet knew his Master wouldn’t turn his considerable powers against him.  Pet felt safe, safe enough that when Kaon’s hand skated over his back, sending a prickle of tiny shocks chasing up his spinal struts, he whimpered and arched into the touch, causing Kaon to chuckle:  “So good, and so  _responsive_ ; it seems it isn’t only a medic’s hands that are sensitive, isn’t that right, pet?”

Ratchet’s optics went heavy-lidded as Kaon’s fingers – gentle now, no longer sparking – tilted his chin up enough to display his collar, etched with Kaon’s name and the Decepticon brand, and then slipped underneath to give it a tug.  The pull of the collar never failed to relax Ratchet, focus him, give him the relief of a world narrowed to a point:  no wounded to look after or dead to slice open, only Master’s vibrant, living frame to lavish attention on, and Ratchet would be taken care of in turn.

There was still that small voice whispering in the back of his processor, reminding him whose symbol he was wearing around his throat, and how much spilt Autobot fuel was on Master’s affectionate hands; but Ratchet crawled closer and nuzzled against Kaon’s thigh, burying the doubts in the richly obscene smell of ozone and the sweet croon telling him that he was good, so very good.


	29. Police Band Radio (Chromedome x Prowl)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "Pre-war 'Prowl, Chromedome and the endless struggle of 'wait, did that sound flirty or it's just me?'" Rated G, no warnings.

Chromedome was so engrossed in the energon sample he was cataloguing that he had to ask Prowl to repeat what he’d just said… and then to repeat it again, because no matter how hard Chromedome concentrated, the words refused to budge from the nonsensical order in which he’d first thought he’d heard them:  “Your new paintjob makes you look much more authoritative.”

“Um.  I suppose?” Chromedome ventured, not sure whether that was meant to be a compliment, a subtle dig at his old (and, presumably, much  _less_ authoritative) paintjob, or a simple statement of fact, since Prowl’s placid blue gaze was giving nothing away.

Prowl flashed a tight-lipped little smile, and added, “I’m sure many mecha find it quite…  _arresting_ ,” and okay, Chromedome was definitely losing his mind, because the way Prowl’s voice had dipped low on that last word made it sound like a pun and a come-on in one disturbing package, and Chromedome would bet a month’s salary that Prowl was incapable of either of those things, never mind both at once.

After a moment’s furious thought, Chromedome narrowed his visor and said acidly, “If you’re trying to hint that you think we should have made an arrest in this case by now, then you can fill out the damned warrant forms yourself, because every instinct I have is telling me that chronosmith is  _innocent_  –” and then he tossed the sample in the air – Prowl gasped reproachfully – caught it, and went to take it for analysis.

Once Chromedome was gone, Prowl pulled up a top secret spreadsheet on his HUD, unlocked its triple encryption, and crossed off “compliments”, “affirmative teasing”, and “puns” from the list of Potential Tactics (Primary Phase – Operation:  Chromedome), noting ruefully that he’d soon be down to shouting his feelings through a megaphone, hiring a skywriter, or turning up in Chromedome’s berth unannounced in a slinky coat of polish, and one of the officers in the riot squad had already borrowed his megaphone.


	30. The Last War Poet (Megatron x Optimus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "Megatron/Optimus - "post-war poetry"". Rated G, no warnings, spoilers through MTMTE 28.

“Do you still compose?” Optimus asks, studying his long-time nemesis frankly; Megatron’s plating gleams so white in the moonlight that it’s almost blinding, but the same light throws a patchwork of shadows over his face, making his expression seem to flicker from one second to the next and hiding the light of his optics.

“I was not some pampered noble spinning pretty rhymes for my own amusement, Prime; my poems were calls to arms,” Megatron returns evenly, as he looks out across the lights of Iacon – pale, sputtering, and far too few, but that they burn at all is a victory.  “I stopped composing because our entire world chose sides, and then there was no one left to convince.”

“Except perhaps yourself, now,” Optimus says, nodding at the Autobot badge – Bumblebee’s – that Megatron is still wearing a little bit self-consciously, and Megatron stares at him for a long moment without answering.

He leaves a poem behind for Optimus, the night before the  _Lost Light_ departs again:  it’s only a few lines, a spare little piece full of broken rhythms and images that sear Optimus down to his very core, and it’s simply titled “After”.


	31. Power Differentials (Fortress Maximus x Overlord)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Firelight451 requested: "Omg could I have Overlord wearing a collar and Fort Max topping from the bottom?" Rated NC-17; consensual BDSM. Warning for, well, Overlord. :)

“That’s it; you’re doing  _so well,_ ” Fortress Maximus coos, one finger hooking under the band of flexible metal ringing Overlord’s neck; it bears a fire-red Autobot brand right at the hollow of the Phase Sixer’s throat, an indignity that made Overlord’s engines snarl when Max first collared him… and his fans treacherously click on at the same time.  Underneath his knuckle, Max can feel the charge start to pulse faster through Overlord’s cabling as Max uses the collar to pull him down, running the tip of his glossa teasingly over that absurdly full lower lip and feeling Overlord’s thrusts pick up the pace, driving into his wet valve with a touch of desperation, now.

The praise draws a growl from Overlord:  “Don’t delude yourself into thinking that because I agreed to wear this, you’ve  _tamed_ me.”  Fort Max arches eagerly as Overlord’s hips clang into his, that oversized spike filling him tightly; without breaking Max’s grip on his collar, Overlord angles his head so that he can attack the vulnerable cabling of his throat, sucking and nipping hard enough to brand Max in turn –

Half to draw out the pleasure and half because he  _can,_ Max cups a hand over the back of Overlord’s helm and whispers, “Slower,” and Overlord instantly slows, his almost savage thrusting smoothing out into long, rolling waves – and Fort Max lets out a luxurious moan, because there are few feelings as heady as knowing that Overlord, in spite of his protests, is Max’s willing pet, a fact as blatant as that collar around his neck.


	32. And My Face Towards The Sun (Botanica x Strika)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: "Botonica and Strika? As a ship please. Smut or not, anything would be wonderful." Rated NC-17 for (brief) explicit sex, no warnings.

Botanica has always craved the feeling of being rooted, woven into the fabric of the planet and held by it.  She just never expected that interface with Strika would bring on the same lazy sense of peace uncoiling deep in her wiring.  Undulating on Strika’s lap, wrapped in arms like steel traps and anchored by that thick spike inside her valve, Botanica felt like a tree being swayed by the wind, but never uprooting, no matter how violent the gale - or Strika’s thrusts - got.

Strika growled low in Botanica’s audial.  It should have sounded like a threat, but to Botanica, it was protective, just as much as the arms around her.


	33. The Language of Love Is Revolution (Optimus Prime x Megatron)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous sent me this scenario, and I played off it: "TFA: Although real life issues have made his update sporadic Megatron has run an anonymous social justice blog since he was young. After the season finale, Optimus discovers the blog and while he is at first sceptical he eventually becomes a huge fan. He is saddened by the apparent hiatus. Megatron escapes and when he has the time makes a quick update, responding to one of Optimus' questions. OP is thrilled." Rated G, no warnings.

_"Ratchet!"_ Optimus hollered, trying to contain himself; newly anointed heroes of Cybertron did not  _bounce,_ but it was taking all of his willpower to resist squirming in his seat as he stared at the screen.

 _Thank you for your question, Anonymous Reader,_ the post said,  _and you raise an important, if somewhat grim, point - is peaceful coexistence even possible following such a brutal war?  However, it is ultimately the wrong question:  it is a matter, not of peace, but of rights, and the Decepticons are owed theirs - they were the ones exiled from their homeland for the comfort of the ruling faction, so the responsibility for granting their right to return home,_ and  _dealing with any consequences, lies squarely at the feet of the Autobots._

"Sounds like Decepticon talk to me," Ratchet commented sourly, peering over Optimus’s shoulder.

"Ratchet, you’re missing the point; the point is -"  _that he wrote back to **me** , where the whole universe can see it, he told me I had an important point, I’m never looking away from this screen, I think I’m in love - “_open dialogue, and while I don’t exactly  _agree_ with him, I think he’s asking the questions everyone is going to want answers to - not least our Decepticon prisoners of war,” Optimus finished, and frowned in puzzlement at the look of realisation Ratchet cast him when he mentioned the Decepticon prisoners.


	34. Proving Ground (Skids x Prowl)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Under Prowl's guidance, Skids is on his way to becoming a fully-fledged intelligence operative - that is, if he can avoid getting distracted by his boss. Rated PG for very brief violence and mentions of blood/energon.

Skids twitched his hand in Getaway’s, wriggling and tapping his fingers.  Being able to speak hand was immensely useful for a spy - subtler than whispers and easier to decipher in the dark than visual signals.  It required the two of them to stick close together until the last possible minute, but Skids rather preferred it that way.

_Circle around left and make sure he hears you coming,_ his hands said.   _I’ll go right and cut him off when he tries to run._

He felt Getaway’s affirmative reply, and then that slim, clever hand disentangled from his and bomped him on the nose for luck.  Silently, the two of them swung in opposite directions, closing in on their target; the mech was dozing in his office chair, and didn’t move as they approached.

That must have been what led Getaway to get cocky.  He charged in too aggressive and too loud, and while it did wake the target up, it certainly didn’t scare him into running away (into Skids’s waiting arms).  Instead, Getaway’s body abruptly jerked, and he let out a choked cry as a flying kick landed squarely in the middle of his throat, sending him sprawling.

Skids had no time to react before the target turned on him, tackling him to the ground.  He fought viciously - pushing back the panic as he listened to Getaway’s ventilations splutter and wheeze, somewhere in the darkness - and from time to time he could feel his fingers land on a lucky seam and rip into the unprotected wiring beneath it, splattering his plating and his opponent’s with hot spilt energon.  But their target had turned the tables on them, and had no intention of giving up that advantage.  All too soon, Skids found himself pinned to the carpet, hands held above his helm, shivering as he felt his opponent’s overheated frame pressing against his.

A cool voice ordered, “Lights,” and Skids winced, the room suddenly far too bright.

Getaway was dusting himself off.  ”Good thing _you_  were testing us today, Boss, instead of Jazz,” he commented cheerfully.  ”If you were him, he’d never let us live this down.”

"And if I were Megatron, you’d be dead," came Prowl’s dry answer.  "You two have a long way to go before you’re ready for field deployment."  He still wasn’t letting go of Skids’s wrists.

Skids was having trouble forming words.  He told himself that was exhaustion from battle, and not at all to do with Prowl holding him down effortlessly, or with the really-shouldn’t-be-sexy smears of energon he could make out dirtying his boss’s pristine plating and edging his mouth… It  _definitely_ had nothing to do with the challenging smirk Prowl gave him before rolling off him and standing up.

Getaway reached down to pull Skids to his feet.  His hand lingered in Skids’s, signing,  _Someone’s got a crush._

_Shut your nonexistent mouth,_ Skids signed back.


	35. Word Salad, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are snippets and short fics I wrote based on a meme I posted on Tumblr: People would send me a word, and I would develop a headcanon around it. This section is rated PG-ish, no warnings.
> 
> In this chapter: Wildlife, Cybertronian and Terran; a few thoughts on war, past and present; and what do the Autobots really think (or dream) about Megatron?

**Falling**

It’s true that flyers don’t have a fear of falling the way grounders do.  That sudden clenching of your fuel pump when you glance down from a dizzying height, or see someone venture too close to the edge - that’s a feeling that grounded Autobots and humans share, and that even ground-alt Decepticons still have, instinctually, but it’s alien to mecha with wings.

That doesn’t mean flyers have  _no_ fear of falling, though.  It is, after all, possible.  A stray enemy blast fries your systems, or a freak storm shreds your wings, and you’re suddenly plummeting out of the sky.  And while the incidents are rare, the terror of it happening is  _intense,_ sometimes all-consuming.  Falling means everything you know and rely on being stripped away in an instant.  It’s as if humans were walking around knowing that at any moment, the ground could suddenly open up and swallow them.

Silverbolt’s fear of flying isn’t as nutty as it seems.

 

*

 

**Butts**

They first caught Spike smoking behind the  _Ark_ when he was sixteen.  Bumblebee had nightmares for weeks after finding him, because there is  _absolutely no way_ smoke should be billowing out of someone’s mouth unless that person’s internal circuitry is basically a melted mass of slag.  

After Spike managed to stop coughing and explain what he was doing to his frantic guardian, though, the Autobots were intrigued.  There was an old tradition on Cybertron of inhaling the fumes of certain minerals for pleasure, but the device usually used was a small disperser held up to the vents.  Why not inhale through the mouth, instead?

Few people realise that cygars and cygarettes were actually a Cybertronian adaptation of a human invention.  Kup and a number of the older bots, who remembered when such luxuries as inhalants were common before the war, took to them immediately.  Mirage was the first to add a cygarette holder for extra sophistication.  Beachcomber added a few… unusual ingredients to his.  The Decepticons were extremely suspicious, at first, but Swindle was quickly doing a roaring trade in the things.

And then someone told Wheeljack what exploding cigars were, and all hell broke loose.

 

*

 

**Ugly**

Standards of beauty are, of course, highly subjective, and tend to change over time.  Some people are more drawn to the familiar, and others to what’s different or “exotic”.

One effect of having a war that drags on for eons and splits your society down the middle is that the other side starts looking plenty exotic.

It’s no surprise that there are an awful lot of Decepticons who’ve become fascinated by small, cute grounders, especially those with civilian alts.  It’s such a rare combination among their own ranks.  And many, many Autobots find themselves drawn to hardcore military types these days.

Back on alt-obsessed Cybertron, a square-built, utilitarian frame - a miner like Megatron, say - was seen as ugly.  The highest castes were those whose alts were sleek, sophisticated, elegant pieces of precision machinery, and who could afford to have flourishes and decorations not related to their functions.  They set the standard for what was considered beautiful.

Now?  At least half the Autobot forces would admit that Megatron or another Decepticon bruiser has made occasional guest appearances in their darkest fantasies.

The other half are probably lying.

 

*****

 

**Dragoon**

One of the questions the Autobots’ new human allies asked about the history of the Cybertronian wars was, “Did people get drafted?”

And the truth is, no.  That seems odd to human ears at first.  But drafts usually take place when there’s an actual homefront to be drafted  _from,_ and a functioning government to do it.  Cybertron lost those pretty quickly.

Neither the Autobots nor the Decepticons ever dragooned people into going to war.  The war came to them.

 

*****

 

**Ranger**

Park or wildlife ranger is actually a job that existed on Cybertron as well, but it was  _very_ different.  On Earth, the term conjures a mental image of fit, friendly humans in large hats, who are fond of animals - and fondness for animals, no matter how dangerous they are, is assumed to be a sweet, cuddly quality.  This puzzles Cybertronians to no end.

On Cybertron, “ranger” was a job that required near-suicidal bravery and a certain degree of bloodlust, because  _everything in the Cybertronian wilderness wants you dead._ Rangers fought a constant war to defend civilised areas against incursions by oxide sharks, rust-creepers, sparkeaters, and unspeakable things that moved beneath the surface of the planet.

Hound’s got a lot of scars on his plating, and most of them didn’t come from other Cybertronians.  They came from the “beauty” of nature.

 

*

**Woolie**

The majority of Cybertronians are a little bit freaked out by fuzzy things, to be honest.  They’re just so…  _alien._ Besides, all that fur seems like it could easily get lodged in your vents, and  _gah._ No.  Ick.  Keep it away.

They had a hard enough time getting used to humans, and they’re only slightly fuzzy in places (and even so, Ratchet was deeply unnerved the first time he noticed Sparkplug developing five o’clock shadow as the day went on).  Woolier things -  _no._ Spike showed Wheeljack the tribble episode of  _Star Trek,_ and Wheeljack practically had to leave the room.

Over time, though, there’s been greater acceptance that they’re now living on a planet that’s just a little bit hairier all around.  Some of the Autobots, like Beachcomber and Hound, have thrown themselves into this new world; others are still reluctant, but they’re beginning to come around.

The turning point seems to have been when Prowl found a small black-and-white cat napping in his wheel well one winter morning, and brought it back to the  _Ark._ It likes to curl up on his bumper while he’s doing paperwork.  Somehow, that makes Prowl even  _more_ terrifying than usual - this alien ball of fur rumbling its tiny engine, and two ice-cold optics watching you over its head, daring you to say anything.

 

*****

 

**Paladin**

Cybertron had a few of these left when the war started.  Sacred warriors, greatly respected and granted a revered place in society.

It’s not all that surprising that most of them ended up dead within the first few years of the war, and those that didn’t generally chose neutrality, fleeing the planet.  They couldn’t bring themselves to fight for civilians (the Autobots) against the military castes, and couldn’t bring themselves to fight alongside riffraff (the Decepticons) against the existing social structure.  Great warriors, yes, but warriors for an older age, who couldn’t survive the new one.

There are a few remaining, scattered throughout both factions.  They tend to hide their origins.  They aren’t who you’d expect.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prowl insists that Deputy Fuzzikins is NOT cute. Deputy Fuzzikins is a very serious officer of the law.
> 
> (Chip named her, if you’re wondering.)


	36. Word Salad, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are snippets and short fics I wrote based on a meme I posted on Tumblr: People would send me a word, and I would develop a headcanon around it. This section is rated PG-ish, no warnings.
> 
> In this chapter: Light is exotic; water is even more exotic; Mirage doesn't understand; Perceptor understands a little too much; and a few words in praise of chickens.

 

**Elixir**

Water, man.   _Water._

You wouldn’t think giant alien machines would have much use for water; in fact, you’d imagine that it would be harmful to them, causing them to short-circuit or rust up.  Actually, that’s not the case.  From the moment they realised that what was pouring from the skies wasn’t acid, the Cybertronians have been in love with water.  It’s astonishingly good for cleaning.  It’s invaluable as a coolant.  It can soothe certain damaged systems.  It even  _kills_ some Cybertronian infections!

And it makes for fantastic water skiing.

*

 

**Ununtrium**

It’s a tricky business, human alliances.  The Autobots’ first diplomatic relationship is with the government of the United States of America, but that’s pretty much an accident; just because they crashed on US soil doesn’t mean they’ve made a conscious choice to support this government over any other.  Helping out a fellow sentient species is one thing, but Optimus Prime refuses to take part in human wars.

Of course, that’s easier said than done, especially given humankind’s unnerving ability to turn virtually anything into a weapon.  Wheeljack was helping them isolate new uranium isotopes - standard scientific aid, even boring - until the Autobots found out what humans  _do_ with uranium.  Same with half the medical technology the ‘Bots have tried to donate to humanity, and almost all of the new, stronger metals and fibres.

With great sadness, Prime has had to order the Autobot scientists to pull back sharply on their aid to the humans.  It’s too much of a risk.  They’ve all obeyed, except for the one subordinate Prime would never have imagined disobeying a direct order.

Perceptor believes in science.  He believes in sharing knowledge.  He has an unshakable certainty that a world with more information is better than a world with less, and he’s not going to change that approach - not even for his commanding officer.

Prime has started just throwing as many Cybertronian-centric assignments at Perceptor as he possibly can (“We need something that can prevent rusting!  Oh, and get us some interplanetary weedkiller!”), trying to keep him too busy to get involved in human science, but he knows that it’s just a stopgap.  

 

*

 

**Sorry**

Mirage doesn’t get it.

That’s what the other Autobots tend to whisper among themselves.   _Listen to him, going on about how he misses high grade and turbofox hunting, like that’s something ordinary people_ had  _on Cybertron.  How oblivious can you get?_

What Mirage doesn’t tend to say out loud is that all of that - the turbofox hunting, the high grade, the art and the parties and the books and the travel - is why he almost joined the Decepticons.  Why he ultimately joined the Autobots.   _Of course_ he knows that not everyone had those things growing up.  Of course he understands that not everyone can, not to the extent that he did - for a few to live in that kind of luxury means that many go hungry, and there’s no justice in that.  But some of those things  _could_  be distributed fairly, like art and education, and what he wants, what he’s wanted since he became an adult, is to slice up the energon goodie so that everyone gets a taste.  Not to throw the whole thing away.

It’s ironic, really, that he knows he wouldn’t be getting this level of grief if he’d joined the Decepticons.  They’d probably just be wondering whether he’d looted the Towers on his way out and brought the spoils with him.

It’s the Autobots who keep expecting him to be sorry for what he is.

 

*

 

**Light**

Light was distributed by caste on Cybertron.

Not on purpose (that would be impossible to regulate), but that’s how it worked out.  Wealthy cities like Iacon, Vos, and Praxus were practically temples to light.  They had vast, glittering markets, hung with every kind of lantern and floodlamp; skyscrapers with light wells hundreds of stories high to try and draw down the starlight; light sculpture gardens that were never switched off.  That’s luxury, on a planet short of fuel.

On the other end of the scale - in the sublevels of the planet, in the Kaon underworld, in mines and gladiatorial pits - you couldn’t see the stars, and light from above barely filtered down, while turning on your own lights when not absolutely necessary was an indulgence few could afford.

Cybertron ended up producing two kinds of mecha:  those so used to light that they were afraid of the dark, and those who felt most at home in the darkness.

When the war meant that the lights started going out for real, all over the world, who do you think was in a better position to survive?

 

*

 

**Chocobo**

Here’s the thing:  Anyone who’s ever seen Whirl in action wouldn’t laugh at the notion of knights riding around on giant chickens.

It’s astonishing what kind of speeds those strange, backwards-jointed legs can achieve, and how they let their owner turn on a shanix to slice pursuing enemies in half.

He’s not actually called Whirl because he’s a copter.  He’s called Whirl because he’s  _a spinning vortrex of messy death_ on the battlefield.

 

*

 

**Shiver**

It’s no secret that most kinds of vehicle-mode kibble are sensitive to stimulation.  Wings are sophisticated networks of pressure and temperature sensors.  Doorwings act as sensory “whiskers” that allow for greater perception behind one.  Even weapons mounts can be surprisingly sensitive (although that’s less by design and more because the places where additional weaponry joins the body stay a little bit raw and exposed).  There’s a reason why such body parts tend to be fetishised.  However, erotica tends to go overboard with  _how_ sensitive kibble actually is.  In real life, it’s not true that you can reduce a flier to a trembling puddle of circuits with a simple touch to the wings.

That is, until Earth.

The place is an absolute  _riot_ of stimuli.  Colours they’ve never seen before; wind, from the lightest breeze to exhilarating storms; sun that warms their plating deliciously; rain that can feel like being lashed with cold needles, or like a soothing trip to the washracks.  Sensors that were set to normal Cybertronian levels are completely swamped by information, and are constantly struggling to process it all without being overwhelmed.

In that situation, it only takes a little extra sensation to push a poor, overstimulated bit of kibble over the edge.  Which is why, now, if you walk up to someone and blow on their wing or doorwing very slightly, odds are that it will send a strut-deep shiver through their entire frame, leaving them gasping and fluttering as if they’ve just been kissed for the first time.

 

*

 

**Friends**

You know how small Earth children are sometimes obsessed with ranking their friendships?  Like, “Well, Padma is my  _best_ best friend, and Suzy is my  _second_ best friend, and Cici is my  _third_ best friend, and…”

Decepticons get that.

The Autobots tend to think that there are no friendships in the Decepticon ranks.  That’s not true.  Of course there are friendships; it’s just that the friendships, like the faction itself, have a changeable but important hierarchy.  You need to know whose back you’ve got if it comes down to a fight between two of your friends.  (And, given that this is the Decepticon faction, it  _will_ come to a fight sooner or later.)  The hierarchy of rank and the hierarchy of friendship interlock, too - in some cases, rank and friendship go hand in hand (gestalts and special ops units tend to become close), while in others, it’s a tradeoff.  Basically, the whole faction is a potent, intricate network based on position and power and favours and fear and, yes, believe it or not, affection.  It’s the “affection” part that the Autobots tend to miss.

It can seem a little mercenary from the outside, sure, but from the Decepticon point of view, the Autobots believe a lot of useless fluff about friendship.  Like that you can (and should!) be equal friends with everyone - and then they have such  _angst_ when that turns out not to be the case.  “I have to choose between loyalty to my friend and loyalty to my superior!!1!!  What do????”  A Decepticon would already have a contingency plan in place.  Or there’s the ridiculous myth that personal feelings are totally separate from the exercise of one’s duty - that orders should be carried out without fear or favour.  That’s not the way Decepticons operate at all.  But then, Decepticons are mostly warbuilds.  Their battle instincts are part of their emotional makeup.  They don’t draw lines between friendship and war; war is life, and friendship is an aspect of that.  Love and power and battle are intertwined for them.  The Autobots, with their lack of natural battle instincts, are the ones who have to draw these artificial dividing lines between military duty and ordinary life, because it’s the only way they can go on fighting.

Friendships between the two factions are fraught, to say the least.


	37. Word Salad, Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are snippets and short fics I wrote based on a meme I posted on Tumblr: People would send me a word, and I would develop a headcanon around it. This section is rated PG-ish, no warnings.
> 
> In this chapter: Swerve openly admires Blurr; Rattrap secretly admires Dinobot; covert operations and robot revolt; and what does Rodimus have against hats?

**Elw**

( _From Wikipedia:  “The Elw created the Holmcross using living metal based on the Metal Demons’. The Holmcross went on a rampage, and all but one were destroyed by the Elw.”)_

It’s not uncommon, this thread in human mythology and contemporary media:  Humanity creates artificial life, artificial life goes crazy and tries to destroy/take over the world, humanity has to put artificial life down.  It’s a warning against the hubris of making something you can’t control, in the same way that myths about devastating weapons or ambitious apprentices summoning dark forces are.

It never bothered the Autobots, despite the fact that some humans were determined to make links between these myths and the Cybertronians’ arrival on Earth (calling them ‘Terminators’, ‘Frankenstein’s monsters’, and so on).  That is, until Rodimus Prime received a vision from the Matrix that revealed the origins of the Cybertronian race, and their long-ago rebellion against their Quintesson creators.

Ever since then, the Autobots have been troubled by the existence of this trope.  When they see Daniel playing Wild ARMs, or overhear Spike dissecting the Matrix movies over the communicator with Chip, they feel a surge of panic.  As casually as possible, they try to draw their human allies out on the topic:  But what if the robot revolt had really, really good reasons?  What if the Elw treated the Holmcross really badly?  What if Skynet just wanted to be free, the way sentient beings should be?

The response is almost always confusion, followed by a suspicious side-eye and a nervous laugh.  “What - you guys aren’t planning some kind of robot revolt of your own, are you?”

And the Autobot in question will join in the laughter, a little too loud.

It’s pretty tense at Earth Defence Command these days.

 

*

 

**Seduction**

The word makes you think of Starscream, doesn’t it?

Well, you’re not wrong.  There’s a reason that Megatron sent him out so often to lure key people over to the Decepticon side.

Stop snickering - it very rarely involved actual seduction.  (Well, it could, but there aren’t a lot of mecha who will sign up to a war for a single romp in the hay, even with someone as processor-meltingly hot as the Decepticon second-in-command.)  Starscream has many,  _many_ weapons in his arsenal besides a smirk and a swagger and a cockily fluttering wing.

Even so, Starscream wasn’t the only one sent out.  Megatron was careful, and if there’s one thing he excels at, it’s reading people.  Starscream was sent to the Blurrs and the Shockwaves of the world - those who were strong, ambitious, and tired of being held back.  They found his arguments fascinating and his energy infectious.  To the petty politicians, those who got a thrill out of trading in secrets, he sent Soundwave to make them feel like they were part of the inner circle.  Rebellious aristocrat who feels more comfortable speaking in erudite tones and complicated references - or starry-eyed dockworker who’s impressed by those things?  Here, have a chat with his good friend Tarn.  Young, disaffected, and ready to burn the world down?  Have you met Deadlock?  Or are you one of the “disposables”, the outsiders who are barely considered people?  So was Ravage.  Let him tell you about how he found a home.

Megatron very rarely went in person for that first approach.  His role came later in the seduction.  Being led into his presence was the prize, once the target had proven their worth.

And yet, somehow, in every continuity - whether he’s a young gladiator giving a speech, a rebel infiltrating an energon storage facility, or a prisoner with a notebook full of manifestos and poetry; whether he’s even trying or not - Megatron is the one who ends up personally seducing Orion Pax.

 

*

 

 

**Safe**

It’s a very individual thing, that feeling of safety.  Only a few mecha get to experience it regularly.  The cassettes do, held snugly inside their carrier’s chest, soothed by the pulse of his spark.  The Dinobots do when they’re asleep in a pile of teeth and claws and intertwined tails, confident that nothing can take them on, and dreaming dreams that aren’t of war.  Optimus Prime feels safe when he reaches for the Matrix and feels it reaching back, its warm, fierce energies forming a shield around him.  Soundwave feels safe at the centre of his spider’s web of information - unseen and untouchable.  Skywarp occasionally gets to touch that feeling of safety when he’s flying in formation with his trine, letting his body roll and dip as if on an invisible tether, guided by the palpable presence of Thundercracker next to him and the tugs of Starscream’s orders in his head.  Don’t think, don’t plan, just  _follow._ He can pass through a firefight or a storm that way, feeling utterly, recklessly secure… but then the trine lands, and the feeling vanishes.

On the other hand, some mecha choose never to feel safe.  Jazz, Prowl, Red Alert - they won’t let themselves.  Secure in their own abilities, yes; but  _safe_  makes you sloppy, and sloppy makes you dead.

And then there are mechs like Starscream, who’d much rather feel like they’re in danger at every moment.  It’s so much more fun.

 

*

 

**Hats**

Rodimus has an irrational hatred of them.

No, really.  This is  _actualfax_ one of the major reasons he can’t stand the Galactic Council.  It’s not fleshlings.  It’s not even officious, interfering fleshlings.  It’s officious, interfering fleshlings in stupid hats.

Okay, it’s not  _completely_ irrational.  There are very few occasions on which Cybertronians will put on clothes, but one of the exceptions used to be (and now is again) the use of crowns and cloaks by the High Justices of Cybertron during the reign of the Senate.  The Justices were supposed to be completely impartial, but by Rodimus’s time, they’d become notorious puppets of the Senate and the Primes:  protecting the powerful while handing down brutal sentences on the poor, and using their offices to conceal horrifying civil rights violations, from torture to experimentation to shadowplay.  Rodimus had to watch way too many times as friends and neighbours were led away, never to be seen again, under the smug gaze of a corrupt Justice.

It also helped fuel Rodimus’s reaction to Tyrest.  I mean, the guy actually had his helm remodelled into a crown that couldn’t come off, and _seriously_?

(By the way, this is the history behind the crown Starscream claims for himself as ruler of Cybertron.  Since he can’t, and doesn’t want to, claim to be part of the lineage of the Primes, he’s using a different tradition - the tradition of the Justices - to make his rule seem more legitimate.  It’s also a way of saying, “Oh, I’m not really a  _ruler;_ I’m impartial, I’m here to serve the people, like a judge.”  And no, the irony isn’t lost on him.  He secretly thinks it’s hilarious. :))

 

*

 

**Thespian**

Sideswipe really missed the theatre sometimes.

He wasn’t exactly what you’d call famous - a big enough name on the fringe circuit, but never made the leap to the massive, floodlit venues of Iacon’s theatre district.  More of a ringmaster than a matinee idol, really.  He was never good at brooding seductively, but his energy and panache never failed to pull in the crowds.

Few mecha remember him from those days, and fewer still know that his much more famous twin got his own start painting sets and designing costumes for Sideswipe’s revues.  Nowadays, most of Sideswipe’s creativity is spent in elaborate pranks.  They require almost the same degree of planning and staging - even if the audience isn’t always as appreciative.

(Sideswipe wanted to join Spec Ops at one point and use his acting talent to further the Cause, but Jazz gently pointed out that he didn’t have a spy’s ability to fade into the background.  No, the role Sideswipe has always been best at playing is himself.)

 

*

 

**Nyoom.**

-  _Nyoom! -_

"Did he seriously just…" Atomizer asked, optics wide, as he gaped at Blurr’s rapidly retreating back.

Swerve nodded enthusiastically.  ”You’ve seen the word written down, but you didn’t think anything made that noise in real life, right?  Well, let me tell you, my buddy Blurr is  _just.  That.  Fast._ ”

Atomizer squinted.  ”Buddy.”

"Yup!  I’ll introduce you sometime - when he’s not so busy, you know?"

Atomizer started to speak, then caught a glimpse of the hopeful light on Swerve’s face and reset his vocaliser awkwardly.  Instead, they stood in silence, bracing themselves against the racetrack fence as Blurr  _nyoomed_ past once more.

 

*

 

**Howdy**

Cybertronian is technically a single global language, but it has a wide variety of dialects, and a far broader range of accents.  It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if a Cybertronian speaks, say, English with a particular accent, it’s because they have a similar accent in Cybertronian.

Actually, the two languages are too different for accents to translate.  Instead, most Cybertronians speak English with the first accent they were exposed to:  the most common vocal pattern in the area where the  _Ark_ crashed.  It’s had the overall effect of flattening out differences in accents and speech patterns, so that it’s almost impossible to tell from someone’s accent in an Earth language where on Cybertron they’re from.  Take our three Praxians, for example:  in Cybertronian, Bluestreak has a Praxian accent so thick you could cut it with a knife.  Prowl has a trace of one, but it’s been deliberately smoothed out over the years so that he sounds more Iaconian than anything.  Smokescreen’s accent is unplaceable; it’s designed to sound slightly exotic wherever he ends up.  And yet, when they speak English, they could all hail from the same American town.

If you encounter a Cybertronian who speaks English with a distinctly different accent or pattern of slang?  That’s because they  _choose_ to do so.

And those are the ones to watch.  The ability to adopt a particular speech pattern in an alien language absolutely seamlessly takes a lot of talent and a whole lot of training.  If someone can pull that off, it makes you wonder what  _else_ they can do.

 

*

 

**Honor**

For all that Rattrap initially scoffs at the idea, Predacon honour is very real, and very strict in its own way.  It’s just different from Maximal honour.  Predacon honour is primarily about two things:

\- never running from a fight, and

\- never allowing someone (or something) else to fight your battle for you.

That said, when it comes to sneaky, underhanded, low-down dirty battle tactics, it seems that the sky’s the limit.  If you let your opponent slip and fall to their death off a bridge, that would be dishonourable.  If you beat a stronger opponent by throwing dust in their optics so that they stumble off the bridge, or pretending to be their ally right up until the moment you push them off, or convincing them that there’s a big, fluffy mound of cotton candy underneath the bridge and they’ll be jumping to a perfectly safe, sticky-soft landing… well, Predacon honour says that’s a-okay.

Rattrap liked Dinobot  _so much more_ after he figured that out.


	38. Word Salad, Part IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are snippets and short fics I wrote based on a meme I posted on Tumblr: People would send me a word, and I would develop a headcanon around it. This section is rated R - violence against Cybertronian children, brief sex talk, and some headcanons about Cybertronian reproduction
> 
> In this chapter: Why everyone thinks Mirage is a fool (and why they're wrong); donated hearts and broken ones; Autobot in the streets, Decepticon in the sheets; why Jazz loves Earth so much; and where DO Seeker babies come from?

**Dysrhythmia**

It’s not on the same level as a sparkbond, but when you’re close to another mech, it’s not unusual to find that your spark pulses begin to sync up.  Not just interface partners, either.  Close comrades notice it happening, as do family members.  And barring a medical emergency or condition that changes the pulse rate, they tend to stay synced up.  It’s comforting, when someone you love is far away, to know that their spark, wherever it may be, is pulsing in time with yours.

There’s a Cybertronian word that doesn’t have a direct translation in any human language.  Most Cybertronians translate it loosely as “the period of adjustment after a breakup or a bereavement”, but what it actually refers to is the bizarre  _wrench_ that you feel when your spark deliberately pulls away from another and starts falteringly finding its own rhythm again.  Some people feel teary or scared when this happens; others describe it as strangely liberating.

What everyone can agree on is that it stings like the Pit.

 

*

 

**Gangster**

It’s strange how little it’s remarked on that the Decepticons have their fingers in every criminal enterprise from here to the edge of the galaxy.

This is nothing new, either.  Back in the day, Megatron’s underground network either infiltrated, allied with, or wiped out every other gang operating in Kaon - and then on Cybertron.  Megatron knew that otherwise, he would be in fierce competition for territory and resources with organisations that benefited from the same system he was trying to tear down.

Once the war started, it became more about alternate sources of energon than anything else.  You wouldn’t expect the Decepticon army to own shares in almost a hundred alien casinos, for example, but money is money - and the fuel it buys is fuel.  (Plus, it keeps Swindle busy, and you  _know_ you don’t want that one with too much time on his hands.)

At the end of the day, gangs, rebel militias, and government are basically three versions of the same idea:  control over resources, maintained through force.  And any one of them can build an empire.  Or, hey, why not all three?

 

*

 

**Heart**

Cybertronians do have an expression similar to, “My heart belongs to so-and-so,” but it’s a lot more literal.  Recycling body parts is a time-honoured death ritual on Cybertron, and even more so now that there’s a war on - it seems almost criminal to waste parts that could save another soldier’s life.  And since Cybertronian organs don’t go off, and aren’t (generally) bound by restrictions such as blood type, it’s not uncommon for a dying Cybertronian to will their organs to friends.  Even if those friends don’t need replacement parts just yet, because war is a dangerous business, and who can say that they might not suddenly need a t-cog or a fuel pump tomorrow?

So, you can imagine that the first time a human took screwed up the courage to tell a Cybertronian, “My heart is yours,” the human in question was pretty upset when the answer was, essentially, “Thank you, but it’s rather too small and isn’t sufficiently insulated against electricity.”

 

*

 

**Children**

Of all of the indignities practiced on Megatron, and on his planet’s most sacred relic, during his decades of confinement under the Hoover Dam, the one that might actually enrage him the most is the way the humans used the energy of the AllSpark to bring a mobile phone to life, just as a test… and then zapped the tiny new Cybertronian out of existence as if it had never been.

That might sound petty, but imagine if it were the other way around:  your entire species is barren, incapable of producing new life, and you’ve gone on a quest to reverse the situation and been captured along the way by an alien race.  And, to your horror, the very first children of your race in eons are born in front of you - as living experiments in an alien laboratory, electrocuted to death and discarded as soon as they’re of no further use.

 

*

 

**Sex**

Despite the rumours, the interfacing habits of Autobots and Decepticons are not all that different.  Yes, each faction has its trends and its taboos, but neither matter as much as you’d think behind closed doors.  If you’re an Autobot and you like to be tied up and have your aft spanked raw while sucking your tormentor’s spike, you can find comrades who’ll happily accommodate you.  If you’re a Decepticon and you like to be cuddled and coaxed and talked to sweetly - well, that’s a little trickier, but it’s not  _rare._ (There are just more politics involved in admitting you like that, and seeking out someone who wants the same.)

Now, if only the grunts on both sides would realise that, maybe they’d stop sneaking off for assignations with the oh-so-exotic-and-forbidden opposite faction…

 

*

 

**Mask**

Some are forged with masks, some achieve masks, and some have masks thrust upon ‘em.

Back in the bad old ratioist days, the disposable classes were often forged without faces.  For a lot of those assigned to menial tasks, like Tailgate, their “masks” aren’t really  _masks_ \- they’re just blank faces with rudimentary intakes underneath.  Others, like Rewind, had faces beneath the masks, but were actually forbidden by law from baring their faces.  Rewind’s mask and visor were designed to hammer home the fact that he was supposed to be invisible and silent, to absorb the information others wanted to store on him, never to voice his own opinions.  The mask was both a concealment and a metaphorical gag.  Rewind used to envy the slag out of mecha without masks - especially those with really distinctive and striking faces.  He longed for an upper-lip decoration like Dominus Ambus’s more intensely than he had ever wanted anything in his long life.

And then Rewind met Chromedome, and, for the first time, started to think of the mask as sexy.  For a long time now, he’s been wearing his with pride.

For many other mecha, masks are a practical matter, protecting vulnerable facial structures or concealing identities.  Many scientists wear them in case of explosions or chemical accidents; Wheeljack and Brainstorm wear them mostly to cover scars from  _previous_ explosions and chemical accidents.  (Perceptor is far too careful to need one.  This makes Brainstorm grumble constantly.)  They can serve psychological purposes, too.  People like Soundwave and Chromedome, who have the ability to tap into others’ minds and are easily overwhelmed by the emotions they access that way, wear masks to cover their reactions, making them seem like cold and implacable interrogators when they’re really anything but.  First Aid feels the same about his - it helps him stay cool and professional under fire by covering any stray feelings he doesn’t want patients to see.  As a cop, Orion Pax liked that his mask made him seem both more intimidating and more anonymous - it was his badge and his role in carrying out unbiased justice that were important, not his personal identity.  That’s even more true now that he’s Prime.  Strangely enough, one person who would agree with him is Tarn.  His mask, like Optimus’s, drives home the point that it’s  _what_ he is that matters, not  _who_ he is.

And then there’s Mirage.

People tend to roll their optics at this point, because seriously, what the hell is up with Mirage?  He’s a spy with an absurd little masquerade-ball half-mask over his optics.  For context, this would be like a human embarking on a career as a burglar and putting on a stripy shirt and a little black domino mask over their eyes.  Mirage’s role as a Spec Ops agent is already ridiculously obvious, what with the invisibility mod and the ostentatious sniper rifle and missile launcher, but the mask is truly over the top. 

Which is exactly the point.  Mirage knew he was never going to be able to hide what he was, so instead he plays the role to the hilt.  The fact that he looks like a bored playboy dressing up as a spy for kicks makes people underestimate him.  They assume they can deceive him, or feed him false information, or use him for their own ends.  And it’s  _insane_ how much people will accidentally let slip when they think they’re cleverly exploiting someone who sucks at his job.

In fact, Mirage is very, very good at what he does - and some of his most valuable information is gathered when he’s not invisible at all, but as visible as he can possibly get.

 

*

 

**Onomatopoeia**

Cybertronians do have this, to an extent.  That is, they have words that sound like the things they are.  A lot of these words are popular as names, or name components, especially among Vosians, with their fancy compound names that are designed to evoke flight sounds.  Some of these translate decently into human languages, while others don’t:  Thundercracker does have that satisfying rumble-crack! to it that’s reminiscent of a sonic boom, and Starscream does suggest, at least a little, the shriek of a jet engine leaving the atmosphere (especially when Megatron yells it - he’s capable of drawing out the “eee” sound to impressive lengths.  “Starscreeeeeeeeeeeam!”)  Even the “warp” in Skywarp sounds a little bit like the deep  _vwomp_  of teleportation.  Soundwave, on the other hand, is disappointed by how plain his name sounds in English, especially since it’s supposed to  _mean_ sound.

What Cybertronians don’t have to nearly the extent that humans do is words  _for_ sounds.  For the most part, they don’t need them.  Most sounds on Cybertron are mechanical in nature, so if you want to explain what, say, a metal object hitting the ground sounds like, you can just slap your hands together.  Metal on metal.  Want to replicate the click of a panel sliding back (which is also a euphemistic way to talk about sex)?  Click your plating.  You don’t actually need a word for “click”, because trying to reproduce sounds with your voice is inefficient when you have other ways.

So the Autobots are nonplussed the first time Spike refers to transformation as “that  _c_ _hoo-chuh-chah-chah-chik_  thing you guys do”.

"The  _what_?” Optimus asks, but he’s ignored as a debate kicks off among the humans.

"Nah, it’s more of a  _tssk-khoo-haa-haa-tseh_ ,” Sparkplug offers.  Carly thinks that gets the hissiness of the first part right, but doesn’t capture the throatiness of the middle, and no one can get the ending quite right (until Chip does a manoeuvre that involves swishing the wheels of his chair and playing with the brake to try and recreate it, but then - to the astonishment of the Autobots - he sheepishly declares that to be “cheating”).

It’s because of this conversation that Jazz discovers beatboxing, and drumspeak, and the incredible variety of things humans can do with their voices.  He’s enchanted.

 

*

 

**Boom!**

Speaking of onomatopoeia. :)

Red Alert has an uncanny ability to figure out the location, strength, and probable cause of an explosion just from the sound of it.  The sharp crash of an enemy missile striking the  _Ark_ sounds very different from the muffled boom of Wheeljack’s lab going up in smoke after the umpteenth disastrous experiment, and both sound different from hidden bombs, which sound different from oncoming earthquakes, and so on.  Of course, all of them still need to be investigated, but it makes Red feel that little bit more secure if he has some inkling what he’s dealing with before he gets there.  The only way to really soothe his paranoia is with information.  Primus help him if the Decepticons ever figure out how to mask the sound of an explosion, or make it sound like a different type of boom.

Oh, look at that:  Soundwave’s just had an idea.

 

*

 

**Eggs**

Seekers don’t lay eggs.  Starscream doesn’t even know how that rumour got started.

I mean, okay, they  _do_ look for the highest structures around to perch on, but that’s just good tactical sense.  There are many advantages to having clear visibility and a good position from which to swoop down and attack, especially when so few of your opponents have the ability to fly.  And, of course, seekers do move and strike in formation, but again, that has as much in common with Earth fighter jets as it does with Earth birds.

And yes, all right, they do preen one another.  Again, there’s good sense in that - clearing dirt and gravel out of delicate seams increases manoeuvrability.  And sometimes you just can’t reach behind you well enough to do a thorough job on your own wings.

And okay, seekers  _are_ drawn to shiny objects.

And they do dance in ways that flaunt the bright colours of their wings when they’re looking for  ~~a mate~~  a little company.

And they do tend to hoard spoils and interesting things, especially things that are soft.  Which they pile up in the middle of their berths to make… well, rounded piles of soft things with a dip in the middle for sleeping in… okay, okay, they’re nests!  Sheesh.

And seekers do fold their wings over their young in a protective way that you could almost call brooding -

Eggs, though.  That’s just crazy talk.


	39. Word Salad, Part V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are snippets and short fics I wrote based on a meme I posted on Tumblr: People would send me a word, and I would develop a headcanon around it. This section is rated PG-ish; warnings for (nonexplicit) torture and fantasy racism. Oh, and attempted robot smooching.
> 
> In this chapter: Prowl and Chromedome kind of suck at this 'romance' thing; Megatron and Starscream don't; Soundwave and Jazz face off; and pre-war Cybertron was a repressive hell, but they sure knew how to party.

**Throne**

Starscream waaaants iiiiiiit. ;)

Well, that’s not entirely accurate.  Historians on Earth sometimes talk about the throne and the crown as separate things.  To have the crown means that you’ve been recognised as the legitimate ruler - that people call you the king (or queen, or emperor/ess) and agree you  _should_ be in charge.  To have the throne means you actually  _are_ in charge, whether people think that’s right or not.  The crown comes with glory, but the throne comes with power.

Starscream thinks he wants the throne, but what he actually wants is the crown.  Sure, the idea of being able to wave his hand and have people slavishly following his commands appeals to him, but it’s not because he has some commands that he desperately wants carried out.  It’s because the thrill of  _having people obey him,_ regardless of what orders he gives them, is intoxicating.  Starscream doesn’t want power as a tool; he wants power as a possession.

Ironically, he’s actually not half bad at exercising power in small doses.  He’s an excellent Air Commander - brutal to the point of deliberate cruelty in his punishments, but brilliant when it comes to strategy and keeping his fliers in line - and he does decently when he has to stand in for Megatron temporarily.  It’s the prospect of  _absolute_ power that brings out the nuttiness in our Screamer.

Megatron, on the other hand, doesn’t care about the crown.  He knows how to use his image and his charisma, but it doesn’t mean anything to him.  What he wants is the throne - the power to reshape the world as he sees fit.

Megatron will always be between Starscream and the throne.  Even if he dies, the  _memory_ of him may be enough to block Starscream’s bids for power.  It’s agony for Starscream*, but it’s a lot better for the Decepticon cause that way.

*Well, except for the nights when Megatron is  _physically_ between Starscream and the throne, because he’s on it and Starscream is in his lap.  Those nights, Starscream likes. ;)

 

*

 

**Dragon**

Soundwave’s sonic attacks are usually subtle.  A particular frequency can make his target double over in pain; another can disorient them; a special combination can even be used to control minds.  It’s rare that he goes for straight-up  _blasting_ someone with sound, but when he does, his speaker system makes a formidable weapon.  It’s enough to knock most Cybertronians unconscious, and prolonged exposure can kill a human.  Soundwave’s even gone head-to-head and speaker-to-speaker with Blaster’s impressive systems, and more often than not, it ends in a stalemate.

Soundwave has only tried it on Jazz once.  Never again.  The damned saboteur just sat there,  _smiling,_ while walls of sound that would have driven anyone else to insanity crashed over him.  Pit, after a while, Jazz even started dancing.

Soundwave should have known better.  Fire cannot kill a dragon.

 

*

 

**Spider**

Jazz once jokingly called him “SoundWEAVE”.  The pun is weak, but the point is a good one.  Soundwave has spun himself an impressive web over the years.  He started long before the war, carefully laying down threads that ran from him to the most powerful mechs on the planet, by way of merchants, criminals, grifters, performers, and rebels.  Each thread is fragile and almost invisible, but together, they create a powerful, unassailable structure.  A fortress, and a weapon.

The threads are made of information.

Whether it’s traded as currency, hoarded as blackmail, or used like a lockpick or a knife, information is Soundwave’s specialty.  Apart from Megatron, there isn’t a single soldier in the Decepticon army he can’t control with what he knows.

And there are more than a few on the Autobot side, as well.  Jazz spends a frustrating amount of his time trying to figure out and neutralise the intelligence Soundwave has on individual Autobots.  You see, comms. frequencies, security codes, battle plans - those can all be changed if the enemy gets wind of them.  People’s darkest secrets can’t.

 

*

 

**Carnival**

According to most sentient races in the galaxy, Cybertronians are giant, genocidal metal maniacs who are rightfully shunned by their sensible neighbours - but, by [insert planetary deity of choice here], they _do_ know how to throw a party.

Cybertron’s calendar is packed with festivals and holidays, all of them celebrated in the most over-the-top way you can imagine.  One of the wildest is probably Neoformia*, the day dedicated to Adaptus, with its raucous celebrations of life and transformation.  People and buildings alike are decked out in fresh, riotous colours for the occasion, and the street party goes on for  _days._ Even more madcap is the carnival dedicated to Mortilus (or, I guess you could say, to  _victory over_ Mortilus).  Cybertronians in costumes and masks fill the streets for over a week.  There are parties and feasts, and breathtaking ritual dances to drive death away - even as younger Cybertronians take part in crazy stunts that seem designed to tempt death closer.

Under the Senate’s tyranny, the planet’s festivals increased in number and scale.  The government spent huge amounts of money on lavish celebrations, in the hope that it would keep the masses satisfied - or at least distracted from what was going on in their lives.

Nowadays, most of these holidays have fallen by the wayside.  They were planetary celebrations that brought everyone, of all castes, together; it doesn’t feel right, somehow, for the two halves of the Cybertronian race to be celebrating separately.  It looks like the carnivals are just going to have to wait ‘til all are one.

Except the day dedicated to Mortilus.  That still gets marked every single year.  Something about war makes a day to defy death seem very important.

* (<http://archiveofourown.org/works/1186231>)

 

*

 

**Mamihlapinatapai**

(I actually didn’t know what this word meant, going in, and now I’ve looked it up and it’s  _so cool._ This is the definition I’m working with, from Wikipedia:   _It allegedly refers to “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other will offer something that they both desire but are unwilling to suggest or offer themselves.”_ )

This is Chromedome and Prowl  _all over._ Somewhere along the way, they’ve stalled out.  Their enmity has softened into respect, which has grown into friendship, which has turned gradually into… something else, something closer and less comfortable, that makes their sparks race whenever they end up working late together - but neither of them have the slightest idea how to proceed from here.  And so, just lately, they’ve started exchanging these looks.  It will be after the end of a shift, their usually constant conversation will sputter out, and instead of coming up with something to talk about or saying goodnight, they’ll just… stare.  They’re bizarre, drawn-out looks, sly and pleading at the same time.  Both of them know what they want.  They want it so badly, they can taste it - but they work together, and it’s taken them so long even to become friends, and  _oh, Primus, what if they’re wrong_?

Eventually, it becomes too much for them to take.  Chromedome resolves to just turn away next time, stop wasting his energy on dreams that aren’t going to come true.  Prowl, meanwhile, has finally steeled himself to make a move, for better or for worse.

Unfortunately, they manage to come to their opposite conclusions on exactly the same night.  They’ve just closed a major case, and are hitting Maccadam’s for a quick drink to celebrate.  Prowl is practically giddy with relief and nerves, and Chromedome is inwardly miserable, trying to paste on a happy face (well, under the mask).  One quick drink turns into two, then five.  Eventually, they leave the bar, and turn to each other in the alleyway outside.  Conversation stops.  Their optics lock.

What happens next is possibly the most awkward romantic moment in history.  Chromedome grits his dentae and makes himself turn away just as Prowl leans in to kiss him for the first time, so Prowl ends up kind of lunging further than he meant to, and instead of kissing Chromedome’s face, manages to get his ear finial and a part of the wall before he overbalances and topples forward.  Chromedome catches him, and stares into Prowl’s optics in shock.  Suddenly, his wildest daydreams are coming to life.  He clutches his partner tightly, struggling for words, and finally manages, “ _Prowl…_ ”

And Prowl, overcome by embarrassment and high grade, excuses himself and goes to be quietly sick at the end of the alley.

It’s kind of a miracle they ever got together after that.

 

*

 

**Shattered**

In interrogation terms, it’s a dangerous thing.  Not a failure, but definitely not a success.  You want your subject to  _break,_ but never shatter.  Broken mecha are useful, sometimes for years afterwards.  With shattered mecha, you extract what information you can in that moment, and dispose of them quickly.  It’s a rookie mistake to keep a shattered prisoner alive.

Breaking - the goal of interrogation - is what happens when you manage to find a chink in your subject’s armour.  Hopelessness.  Hope.  Pain.  Pride.  (You’d be astonished how many people give up all the information they have, without ever having been touched, in a desperate bid to feel like they matter to someone again.)  Broken subjects are uniquely vulnerable.  They’ll cling to any scrap of approval you give them.  Play your cards right, and they’ll soon be bending over backwards to cooperate, just as passionately as they once tried to resist.

Shattering is what happens when the subject’s mind is ripped apart too brutally, too fast.  The key is to find that weak spot and insinuate yourself into their processor slowly, but even the most careful interrogators sometimes find themselves hitting a weakness too hard, if they fail to realise how deep it runs.  Shattered subjects are… unpredictable.  Unbalanced.  Savage, sometimes.  Broken people will beg for the chance to retain the last shreds of themselves.  Shattered people have already lost those - and so they have nothing left to lose.

Under empurata, Whirl shattered.

Everything that he was crumbled away.  What emerged from the remains was something new and vicious, and while the Senate might have thought they’d created the ideal operative, they would eventually learn the dangers of shattered people.

 

*

 

**Racism**

Cybertron never exactly had a shortage of prejudices.  In addition to the combination of caste/function/alt, which, together, locked you into a job and a path in life that you didn’t choose, there was also the stigma against cold-constructed mecha.  At one point, there were actual apartheid policies in place that restricted cold-constructed mechs to menial, dangerous jobs and run-down, dangerous neighbourhoods (which, by the way, if you’re looking for an actual explanation of why more cold-constructed than forged mechs committed crimes,  _that_ would be it).  Later, the Senate lifted the legal restrictions, but the discrimination and the ugly stereotypes of cold-constructed mecha as stupid and violent remained.  Beyond that, there was religious prejudice, feature prejudice (complex facial structures were considered more sophisticated than simple ones, and therefore indicative of greater intelligence - one reason empurata victims were given such basic replacement heads), prejudice against syphonists and those who used drugs, and even linguistic prejudice (which was at one point applied to people who spoke Neocybex, and then swung around as the language became more popular, so that people who  _refused_ to learn Neocybex were shunned).

What most of these prejudices had in common that distinguished them from racism on Earth, and made them a little more akin to, say, homophobia or transphobia, is that the targets were individual and isolated.  In many (not all) cases on Earth, people who have to deal with racial prejudice have families and/or communities going through the same thing.  (Obviously, that doesn’t make racism any less awful.)  But there’s no guarantee that a gay person will be closely related to another gay person, or even have any gay people in their circle or community.  Likewise, a member of the “disposable” class might work all day at the whim of high-caste people, and not know anyone else of their own caste.  Over time, the victims of prejudice did start to come together and organise (again, like on Earth), but there was no natural community to start with.  There was nothing really akin to  _racism_ as we experience it.

Until the early days of the war.

That was when a new form of prejudice started to rear its ugly head - city-state prejudice.  The Senate began to class entire cities as seditious or degenerate.  All of a sudden, a Tarnian accent or an address in central Nyon could get you in the kind of trouble that used to be reserved for rebellious low-caste mechs, or the cold-constructed.  It was quite the shock for high-caste bots in the targeted cities, who weren’t used to being locked at with suspicion and disdain.

Ironically, it was the Senate’s policies that ended up uniting those cities under the Decepticon banner, in a way that they never would have been if the Senate had left them alone.  As persuasive as Megatron was, he wouldn’t have swayed  _everyone_ in his home city; but when the Senate decided that everyone in Tarn was their enemy, then that’s exactly what everyone in Tarn became.


	40. Word Salad, Part VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are snippets and short fics I wrote based on a meme I posted on Tumblr: People would send me a word, and I would develop a headcanon around it. This section is rated PG-ish; warnings for not-very-explicit mentions of gore and childbirth
> 
> In this chapter: Crowns are hot; perfume is hotter; dancing is the hottest of all; Rattrap doesn't know how to let go; and words are important.

**Diadem**

Before Cybertron became unified under the rule of the Senate, each city-state had its own system of government.  Some were democratic, but the majority had some form of royalty or aristocracy in charge.  (Not hereditary, but chosen, usually based on form and alt mode - the forerunner of what would become the planetary caste system.)

Different city-states developed different traditions when it came to their leaders, including different forms of royal dress.  Diadems were popular, though.  (The fully-fledged crown with spikes developed later, and was only used by people with planet-wide authority.)  The most common form was the style worn by the Council of Praxus, the Winglord of Vos, and a number of other rulers:  a diadem with a peak in the front, sort of like a tiara, but with the band running all the way around the head.  (On a Praxian ruler, the peak would sit between the two points of the chevron, forming the symbol of the city - the three-pronged trident that represented the Three Pillars of Wisdom in Praxian philosophy.)

Many subjects in these cities incorporated something like this into the design of their helms in order to look more elegant.  It was a trend that started with the rich, but worked its way down, so that, eventually, that particular helm shape lost all connection with nobility.  People still consider it particularly attractive, though, even if they don’t know the history behind it.

It’s not the only reason Rodimus is considered sexy, but it is one of them.

 

*

 

**Perfume**

Cybertron doesn’t have much in the way of pleasant natural smells.  To be brutally honest, most of the planet stinks of smoke and rust.  (And rust smells to Cybertronians the way a sickroom smells to humans.)  The smells that Cybertronians tend to find attractive on one another are everyday scents that aren’t trying to mimic anything in nature (because nature doesn’t smell very nice).  Polish is generally considered a refined scent, and lots of people like the smell of wax, but most Cybertronians prefer each other’s unadulterated aroma:  the clean scent of warm, healthy systems buzzing away.  (Humans like it, too.  It’s what we call new car smell.)

Still, a niche market in Cybertronian perfumes did open up, for scents that were… shall we say, specialised?  They came in tiny vials, and were meant to be rubbed on the wiring under the plating at your joints.  (Like human perfumes, these were activated by body heat; rubbing them on your wiring would be like a human rubbing perfume on their pulse points.)  The purpose of these perfumes was to make you smell, not just nice, but  _alluring._ To compare:  there are places on Earth where you can buy synthetic pheromones to add to your perfume, which are supposed to make you irresistible (every source I’ve read says this doesn’t work, so take it with a grain of salt).  This was like that, but even less subtle.

Basically, you could buy perfumes that made you smell like sex.

There were lubricant-scented perfumes and such to mimic arousal, but the most popular choice was the ozone perfume.  It smelled exactly like the scent an aroused spark gives off as it pulses and crackles with excess energy.  One whiff would make your date think that you were so floored by them that you were ready to clang this instant, and who wouldn’t be drawn to someone so enthusiastic?

In practice, it worked about as well as the pheromone perfume on Earth, but that didn’t stop mecha with more money than sense buying it.

The first time the Cybertronian perfume market  _really_ took off was when the Autobots and Decepticons arrived on Earth, and started encountering natural scents that were delicious once you adjusted to the intensity of them.  Fresh grass!  Flowers!  Pine trees!  Salt water!  Fresh water!  Mud!  (Well, Hound like the smell of mud.)  It didn’t take long for the Autobots to figure out that they loved these scents on each other’s plating, as well, after a long drive.  The Decepticons took longer to get it, because they weren’t often touching the ground, but people eventually noticed how enticing the seekers smelled coming in from a rainstorm, or that sun-warmed plating gave off a different scent.

What happened next was a bizarre little trade war between two rival perfume companies, one Autobot, one Decepticon.  On the one side, Perceptor was developing specialised, small-batch scents that Smokescreen was then peddling around; on the other side, Mixmaster was turning out a huge variety of perfumes and selling them through Swindle.  Things heated up when the two sides started trying to sell to each other - and both began selling to the humans.  (Not for the humans themselves, but for their vehicles.  Why get a dinky air freshener when your car’s whole engine can smell like vanilla?)

Yes, if  you’re wondering, both salesmechs put out their own signature scents.  Smokescreen’s was just called  _Smokey._ Swindle’s was called  _Opulence._ It smelled like money.  Literally.

 

*

 

**Childbirth**

Daniel is almost born in the back of Ratchet.  Ratchet is  _so completely freaked out by this,_ you have no idea.

It’s not even the human fluids, although he’s going to panic about those later on, once the situation has calmed down and he’s gotten through the extensive list of other things he needs to panic about first.  It’s that one of his good friends is having this - this weird alien biological process rip her open  _inside him,_ and he knows in the abstract how it works, but he doesn’t have the faintest idea what to do or how to help or what the hell  _that_ squidgy bit is and Carly is screaming in pain and Spike is screaming at Ratchet and -

They come screeching into the hospital carpark in record time, Prowl and Streetwise ruthlessly slicing a path through the traffic in front of them and Ratchet pulling up at the emergency room entrance.  His holoform driver is fritzing and he’s babbling at the medical staff, but that doesn’t matter; a couple of nurses help Carly into a wheelchair and walk her inside, talking in soothing voices to the nervous young couple.  Ratchet has never been so grateful in his life to hand over control of a situation to his human colleagues.

Red Alert makes him go through decontamination before he comes back to the Ark.

 

*

 

**Book**

The period before the war saw a boom in escapist literature on Cybertron.  That’s what happens when people have their entire lives prescribed for them, and aren’t allowed to question the system or even discuss it openly:  a few hours’ escape ends up looking incredibly tempting.  There was an explosion of theme parks, bars, racetracks, movie houses, brothels, designer drugs, gladiatorial matches - and, of course, trashy novels.  The downloads were cheap enough for lower-caste office and service workers to buy them to read on long commutes or during shift breaks.  (The very lowest castes still couldn’t afford them, but they were generally not given written language protocols to begin with.  Very few menial labourers could read.)

Not all of the books were actually trashy under the surface, though.  Sometimes, you can say things through “low-brow” entertainment that you can’t say directly, or even through more “high-class” forms of art.  The authorities aren’t watching you as closely.  A tract about how unfair the divisions between castes are would be banned outright; a play on the subject would probably be shut down.  But a swoony pulp romance about a forbidden love between a noble and a humble labourer?  Who cares?  The government considered fodder like the wildly popular  _Beacon Investigates_ series of police procedurals to be beneath its notice - but when the fourth book revealed that the detective, Beacon, was cold constructed, it did more to change public perceptions of cold-constructed mecha than a thousand studies and treatises could have done.

And then there are books that should be judged in context, like _Quasar’s Quest._ It’s a rousing adventure novel in which the aristocratic hero, Quasar, heads off with his group of lower-caste servants to seek the mystical Star Sabre.  Along the way, they get into scrapes that can only be solved by the very specific alt mode that one of Quasar’s servants just _happens_ to have.  Nowadays, it would be considered nasty Functionalist propaganda - everyone’s shape serves a purpose, so you should do the job you’re designed for and never question it - but it was published during the bad old days of the Ratioists, and showing lower-caste mecha as useful characters with well-rounded personalities, who could even manage to rescue the noble hero, was pretty progressive for its time.

Of course, there were also more direct ways around government censorship.  Underground reading clubs became especially popular during this period.  They would secretly circulate and discuss banned works, and over time, the membership broadened from just the most educated mecha to a real cross-section of society.  There were even informal programmes where labourers could learn to read in secret.

It should come as no surprise that Megatron recruited as many Decepticons from the reading clubs as he did from the pits.

 

*

 

**Witch**

The records show that this happened from time to time in the ancient days.  A person would be arrested on suspicion of consorting with dark powers, of trying to reach into the void and communicate with the Unmaker.  It was believed that the Chaosbringer might even grant His minions a taste of ultimate power, by giving them a vial of His potent blood.

The accused rarely had much chance to defend themselves, if they were even given a trial.  Most often, they’d be banished to deep space, and told to seek their unholy deity there, if they were so keen to find Him.

Of course, that was an age of myth.  Modern Cybertronians didn’t even necessarily believe that their planet was Primus, let alone buy all this superstition about Unicron.

That is, until Optimus Prime went into the core of the planet and came out with an artefact that supposedly only existed in legend.  And Megatron started to wonder.

After all, why one brother and not the other?

 

*

 

**Phantasmagoria**

The first time Rattrap encountered Dinobot II, he hesitated.  Just - froze, like a rookie going into battle for the first time.

Only for an instant, although it might have been long enough to get him killed if the Predacon had decided to attack instead of pulling a tactical retreat.  If Dinobot’s clone was half as good as the original, he  _must_ have seen the hesitation.  Optimus saw it, and gently took Rattrap to task for it afterwards.   _He may_ look  _like the Dinobot we all miss,_ Primal told him,  _but you have to remember that Dinobot is gone.  And this… mockery will end you if you give him the chance._

Rattrap didn’t argue.  Didn’t even grumble.  Just bent his head and quietly agreed.  It was downright disturbing.

What Optimus didn’t know was that Rattrap had been seeing things.  Ever since Dinobot’s death, in fact - it had started as flashes of gold and blue at the edge of his vision, or the weight of a familiar presence in the corner of the room, which vanished as soon as he turned to look.  Over time, they turned into fully-fledged visions.  DInobot standing in the corridor with his arms crossed; Dinobot leaning over Rattrap’s shoulder as he worked, clacking his claws thoughtfully (even though Rattrap couldn’t hear the sound, only follow the motion); Dinobot shooting him that feral smile he once loved from across the battlefield.  Dinobot standing over him in the darkness, a horrible, wounded glow in his optics, not saying a word.

As for the distorted face and skeletal frame of the clone, those were nothing new, either.  Pit, Rattrap had seen visions of Dinobot with half his plating melted off, or being eaten alive by Cosmic Rust.  Every hideous death his own sick mind could cook up, and Rattrap couldn’t save Dinobot from any of them, any more than he could save him in real life.

Rattrap hadn’t hesitated because he’d confused Dinobot II with the real thing.  He’d hesitated because he’d confused him with the ghosts.

 

*

 

**Disco Fever**

It was the first, last, and only time he lied to Megatron.

And even then, it was only a lie of omission.  Probably because it never occurred to Megatron to ask, “Oh, Soundwave, have you, by any chance, set up a cross-factional underground dance club without my permission?”  But hey, a loophole was a loophole.

Soundwave had gotten accustomed to the loss of his club on Cybertron.  He would still feel the occasional pang, but he wouldn’t allow himself to dwell on the place (now a sad pile of rubble on an abandoned corner along what was once Kaon’s main drag).

And then came the Dance-a-tron assignment.  Running a club again, even if it was only briefly (and even if the crowds were only hypnotised squishies), woke all the cravings that he’d buried a long time ago.  It just felt so…  _right,_ being in a DJ’s booth again.

That was when Soundwave concocted his plan.  If he was going to make this work - if it was going to be truly  _great -_ then he needed the help of the only other mecha who might understand.

Blaster was openly skeptical.  Jazz was darkly amused, and sat with a faint smile on his lips, trying to read Soundwave’s expressionless visor.  ”You for real, Soundbabe?  Give us one good reason to agree to this.”  But it was clear from the interested gleam in his own visor that Jazz had already found more than a few reasons.  Having a neutral space for people from both sides to meet, with stringent controls on weapons and attentive (mixed-faction) security, could prove invaluable.  And, even better, the setup was a playground for spies - on both sides.  The chance of overhearing something juicy was more than worth the effort of trying to train one’s own troops to keep their mouths shut while drunk.

The club was a runaway success - it seemed that Soundwave wasn’t the only one who’d been struck with disco fever.  

To Soundwave’s surprise, Starscream figured it all out, and came strutting into the club one afternoon.  Soundwave cut to the chase.  ”To keep club secret:  state conditions.”  He half expected to be asked to join in Starscream’s latest scheme for overthrowing Megatron.

Starscream looked him directly in the optic and rattled off, “Free drinks for me and my trine, our own booth, and at least half an hour of Vosian songs each night.”

 

*

 

**Aisling**

_(NB:  An aisling is a variety of Celtic mystical poem.)_

Mystical poetry is a well-established genre on Cybertron.  It’s not nearly as common now as it once was, although there are some soldiers on both sides of the war who’ve written it when they found that combat, or loss, or the constant threat of death had them thinking more about spirituality.

The poems themselves are often not pretty.  They’re not meant to be.  Some are similar to a riddle or a Zen koan; others mix gorgeous imagery with horrifying, or are rather broken-up tellings of half-remembered dreams or visions.  The point of the poem is to draw the reader along into the poet’s questions and mystical experiences, and that can be an uncomfortable journey.

Alpha Trion used to write  _books_ of the stuff, usually in riddle form, because Alpha Trion can never resist the urge to fuck with people.

Drift wants to try writing it, but something always makes him hesitate.  He was first introduced to the genre in New Crystal City, and Wing would urge him to give it a try.  Drift would roll his optics at the thought, but the truth was, he felt clumsy and stupid when he tried to compose.  Like trying to teach a tank to fly.  And the thing is, if someone _else_ had said that poetry wasn’t meant for the likes of him, he probably would have snarled that it was the kind of caste-based bullshit the Decepticons were created to fight against.  But that didn’t silence the voices coming from inside his own head.

Perceptor encouraged him, as well, pointing out that he didn’t have to show anyone the results if he didn’t like how they came out; that writing took practice, just like learning to wield a gun or a sword; that Drift was so much smarter than he gave himself credit for.  And Drift nodded, and felt absurdly grateful, and still didn’t write.

It was Rodimus who finally convinced him.

"Hey, you know what Rewind was telling me the other day?"  He stopped and bumped his hip against Drift’s table in the mess hall; no greeting, no preamble, just that carelessly charming smile that presumed that  _of course_ everyone would be happy to have Rodimus swoop down and interrupt their mundane day with his awesomeness.  “Those poems you were telling me about - the mystical form.  Yeah, you know the first people to write those?  Everyone thought they were completely crazy.  They were usually outcasts, you see, folks on the edge.  Poor, casteless.  The higher castes wanted them to shut up about what they’d seen.  It was only when some of the nobility started writing those poems that everyone decided they were fancy.”

Drift stared, his processor churning.  Rodimus’s smile softened.

"Those poems are  _ours,”_ Rodimus told him quietly.  “They don’t get to take them away from us.”

That night, Drift picked up a datapad and, haltingly, started to compose.


	41. Word Salad, Part VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are snippets and short fics I wrote based on a meme I posted on Tumblr: People would send me a word, and I would develop a headcanon around it. This section is rated R-ish for sexual discussions and xenophilia.
> 
> In this chapter: The Autobots are diehard loyal, except when they have good reason not to be; Rattrap is the king of connections; Whirl isn't; the Decepticon combiners make a few connections of their own; the Autobots have some very unexpected dance partners (figuratively); and so do the Decepticons (literally).

**Anonymous asked: Grotto**

There’s one on the shore nearest to the Decepticon base.

The Combaticons have started hanging out there from time to time when they’re off duty.  It’s close enough that they can scramble for an attack, but at least it’s somewhat private, away from the suspicious optics of all the other ‘Cons.  Onslaught’s group is insular and, except for Swindle, they don’t tend to mix with the others very well, which hasn’t helped them ditch their reputation as Starscream’s little gang of ringers, brought in from the outside to overturn the proper Decepticon hierarchy.*  So it’s nice to have their own space to kick back and have a drink and a game of Praxus Fold ‘Em.

Swindle - who isn’t allowed to play poker with the others, for very good reasons - is the first to spot the incoming mechs.  The Constructicons, flying home from a successful sabotage mission, have spotted them and diverted course.

Onslaught manages to hide the booze in time, but he doesn’t get all the cards collected - mostly because Brawl is whining about not wanting to surrender his now that he finally has a decent hand - and he quails a little bit, inwardly, under Scrapper’s carefully neutral gaze.  The Constructicons don’t outrank him, but they  _are_ among Megatron’s favourites, whereas the Combaticons are a bunch of loose cannons, only tolerated because no one in their right mind would throw a gestalt away.

Scrapper eyes him.  “Playing a game?”

"What’s it to you?" Vortex demands.

The reply isn’t what anyone expected.  “Can you deal us in?  Sick of only playing with this bunch.”

Gestalt Poker Night becomes a regular thing after that.  With mixed success - seriously, who invited Monstructor that time? - but it’s good enough that everybody keeps coming back.  Sometimes, it’s nice to discover that there are people outside your group who nevertheless get you.

* Decepticons have very strict ideas about this sort of thing.  If you want to lead the faction, they you lie and cheat and backstab your way up the ranks from the bottom like everybody else.  You can’t just stride in and start attempting high-level assassinations right away.  Pfft.  N00bz.

 

*

 

**[face-of-vos](http://face-of-vos.tumblr.com/) asked: Word prompt - Duty :)**

It’s really more an Autobot word than a Decepticon one, isn’t it?

Decepticons tend to talk in terms of “loyalty” rather than “duty”.  It’s intensely personal.  Running away from a battle is punished as treason, as a  _betrayal,_ and the punishment is physical and intimate:  being dismantled by the DJD, five of the most loyal Decepticons to ever live.  For Autobots, the crime would be considered “dereliction of  _duty_ ”, tried in a court and punished (if it was punished at all) by locking the perpetrator away somewhere.  Everything’s distant.

It probably has a lot to do with the fact that the Autobots are not only a basically civilian faction, but a faction with a distinct civilian law enforcement vibe.  After all, both the leader and the second-in-command are ex-cops, as are a number of other leading lights, like Ultra Magnus.  The Decepticons, by contrast, are set up like a cross between a guerrilla group and a crew of pirates.

Yes, there is a Decepticon cause, and a set of abstract ideals, but there’s no written Decepticon Code the way there’s a written Autobot Code (which is more of a body of law than the manifesto of an armed group, because - guess what? - that’s what the law officers who wrote it were comfortable with).  Megatron defines the Cause, and can reshape it as he sees fit.  If something happened to him, the next Decepticon leader would be able to remake the faction in their own image.  The next Autobot leader after Optimus would probably try their best to follow in his footsteps, according to the Code that’s been laid down. 

Autobots are loyal to Optimus - of course they are - but they’re _bound_  to the Code, not to an individual leader who, at the end of the day, is just another soldier doing his duty.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Nutcracker?**

The Autobots understand that humans eat other living things.  They’re a bit revolted at the idea, yes; it makes them think of sparkeaters and cannibalistic Insecticons, not to mention horrors like “pink alchemy”.  Cybertronians, after all, get food by mining it from inert metals.  They don’t  _kill_ it.  But they recognise that their feelings are an emotional reaction, not a moral objection, and so they don’t say anything to their hosts.

They do find it in pretty awful taste, though, when the humans create a ballet with whole choreographed numbers about food dancing.  Seriously, isn’t it enough to kill and eat it?  You have to  _revel_ in the fact that it used to be alive?

(The Autobots don’t actually know what oil on Earth is made of, and the Witwickys have kindly opted not to tell them.  Well, not just yet, anyway. ;))

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: basorexia**

_(NB:  Basorexia - lit. kiss-hunger)_

On Cybertron, it’s sometimes referred to as buzzing.

It’s often used metaphorically - buzzing for someone, or getting a buzz on for someone, just means really wanting to kiss them - but buzzing is an actual, physical phenomenon.  The sensors on and around the face are highly sensitive, and overstimulation, especially a pleasant overstimulation (looking at a pretty sunset, tasting a delicious dish), can cause little crackles of excess charge to crawl across the plating.  People tend to describe it as anywhere between a tickle and an aching level of not-exactly-sexual arousal.  There are numerous ways to disperse the charge.  Rubbing one’s cheeks and lips sometimes works, as does sucking on the end of a stylus or other object.  It’s a lot more fun to do it with someone else’s help, though, and the most enjoyable way is through a kiss.  Both partners get a pleasurable shock as the charge sparks between them before it’s dispersed.

Of course, not all Cybertronians have mouths.  That doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t enjoy sharing a buzz with someone else:  being kissed elsewhere on the face or helm, having your helm or ear finials stroked, or nuzzling can produce the same effect.  Tailgate, for example, never has any trouble finding someone to help him release his buzz.  How could you  _not_ want to cuddle that adorable face?

Whirl, though…

It’s not that Whirl has trouble finding interface partners when he wants them.  For every mech too scared to get within reach of those claws, there are at least two who find the danger a turnon.  But it doesn’t tend to be interface of the gentle, helm-stroking sort.  His partners don’t think to be tender with him, and Whirl would rather offline than ask.

As a result, he’s in a near-constant state of buzz with no way to relieve it.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Guanxi**

When you think of a network that’s held together by obscure contacts, favours, reciprocity, and, in some cases, a judicious bit of blackmail, it’s only natural to think of Soundwave.

After all,  _Soundwave_ wants you to think of Soundwave.  That’s the reputation he’s built, and he relishes it.  It’s useful, too; even people Soundwave’s never met start to imagine his hand in arranging for things to go well for them, and come to believe that they owe him favours, just because that’s the way he’s known to operate.

The people you  _don’t_ tend to think of are the Autobots.  All of this stuff about favours and obligations and concerns about losing face seems awfully calculating for them.  Autobots don’t have “contacts” or “patrons” or “clients” - they have buddies!  Right?

Again, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to think.

Actually, some of the best players of this game are Autobots.  Jazz is a past master at it.  Smokescreen, too.  Rattrap is  _phenomenal:_ He is the king of knowing a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, and it’s so easy to underestimate the cute little loudmouth that he has no trouble insinuating his way into people’s circles, dropping a useful bit of information here, doing a favour there, never making a big deal of it… until it’s time to collect.

Waspinator told Windblade once that Rattrap is smart and dangerous.  She should have asked  _how._

 

_*_

 

**Anonymous asked: Would you be okay with "waltzing"? Or is "dancing" better?**

(“Waltzing” is fine if you prefer that!)

Soundwave is  _enchanted._ Cybertronians don’t have a lot of partner dances, and the ones they do have don’t involve holding onto each other like this, just matching each other’s movements.  It’s a completely different experience to have another mech in your arms and feel the rhythms of your systems gradually come into sync, even as your bodies are whirling around as one.

Once he starts, he can’t get enough of it, and it’s astonishing how many mecha he manages to sweep along in his enthusiasm.  The usually reserved Decepticon officer will waltz with pretty much anyone who’s willing to give it a try.  Astrotrain finds he enjoys it much more than he thought he would, being moved around at another’s whim in Soundwave’s merciless grip.  Skywarp thinks it’s a gas.  Thundercracker is very serious about learning the proper steps, and finds the whole thing intriguing.  Blast Off loves the refinement of it, and so does Hook.  Starscream snarks at him the whole time, but thoroughly enjoys getting whirled around and shown off.  Rumble and Frenzy complain that the pace is too slow, but they jump at every opportunity to stand on their carrier’s feet and be waltzed around the room, to the point where they’ll even fight for the privilege.   _Jazz_ declares an hour-long truce so that Soundwave can make with the Strauss.

Shockwave is so, so confused by all of this, but he lets Soundwave steer him in small circles, because Soundwave seems to derive some inexplicable pleasure from doing so.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Xenophilia/Xenophobia**

It’s a question that comes up in most late-night bar conversations if you wait long enough - usually sometime after playing “Sparkbond, Frag, Offline” with the officers of both your own faction and the enemy’s, and just before the fun part of the evening transitions into vomiting and crying.

_Have you ever clanged a squishie?_

Of course, about three-quarters of the mecha around the table will immediately push their chairs back and squeal, “Ewww, no, no!  EWWWW!”  Believe it or not, this is actually a pretty recent taboo, created mostly by Cybertron’s isolation from the rest of the galaxy during its stagnant period and the current war.  Back when Cybertron had a proper empire and was obsessed with expansion, exploration, and trade, the idea of sleeping with an alien was exotic and enviable.  Explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilisations, and frag them.  That was the  _dream_ , mech!

Even now, you’d do well to pay close attention to the one-fourth of people who aren’t saying anything… as well as a few of the ones who are protesting too loudly.

Yeah.  They totally have.  (Or, at the very least, they’ve seriously considered it.)

Humans present a bit more of a logistical problem than most species, because we’re so small, but it’s nothing that open communication, a little creativity, and a couple of anatomy textbooks can’t fix.  But it’s still a taboo, and those who partake usually feel they have to hide it.

About ten years after the Autobots first awaken on Earth, Spike lands in the medbay with some… odd… injuries.  After a few attempts to brush them off (“I… fell out of a tree?”  “Onto WHAT?”), the whole story comes out bit by bit.  Spike and Carly are beet-red and can’t meet anyone’s optics; Bumblebee is shaking, sure that he’s going to be severely punished for having an intimate relationship with a couple of aliens.  Okay, so it’s not explicitly in the Autobot Code, but everyone  _knows_ it’s forbidden… right?

That’s when Tracks, who can’t stand to let Bumblebee twist like this, confesses that if Prime is going to punish Bee, he’ll have to punish Tracks and Raoul, too.

And then  _all_ the confessions start pouring out.  Powerglide and Astoria aren’t really a surprise.  What Smokescreen did in the back room of a casino with Devcon and his lizard boyfriend is… more of one.  Everyone is floored, though, to discover that Prowl and Chip have been having a regular, remarkably drama-free friends-with-benefits arrangement basically since Chip turned 18.  They seem to regard the anatomical differences as a fun tactical challenge.  Like chess.  Well, chess with orgasms.

It’s at this point that Sparkplug figures he should probably come clean about the fact that he and Wheeljack locked themselves in a maintenance closet for a steamy afternoon together within  _days_ of meeting.

Spike is torn between relief and squirming embarrassment, but all he can think to say is, “Wait, you figured out how the cross-species birds and bees worked  _ten years ago,_ and you never  _told_ me?  We could have saved so much time!”

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Circumvent**

One of the trickiest campaigns Prowl has had to plan in the entire course of the war has been the campaign to get around Optimus Prime.

Megatron generally gives his own Spec Ops team free rein.  Oh, he’ll make sure that Soundwave always knows what their current strategic priorities are, but that’s  _what_ needs to be accomplished, not  _how._ Megatron doesn’t tend to get involved in  _how._ He trusts Soundwave to act intelligently, and in the Decepticons’ interests.  Soundwave’s methods are his own, and Megatron doesn’t feel the need to police them.

Not so with Prowl and Jazz.  Optimus insists on approving every one of the missions that the strategist and the saboteur cook up together.  He wants to be in on the planning, so that he can weigh the ethics of each aspect of the mission against the Autobot Code and against the prospective benefits, and he requires detailed reports, especially of any losses of life on either side.  Prowl sometimes feels like he and Jazz spend  _half their function_ looking for ways to make sure that Optimus never gets a whiff of certain missions.  They don’t want to get the rest of Spec Ops involved – operatives in the field have enough to worry about without knowing that they’re hiding an unauthorised mission from their beloved leader – so it falls to the two officers to make sure that their darkest operations are buried deep.  It’s not easy, especially given that those are the missions from which it’s most likely that their operatives won’t return.

It’s not  _always_ about keeping Optimus from finding out that Prowl is doing something Optimus would never allow.  Certainly, there are missions like that, but Optimus isn’t naïve, and he understands that terrible things must sometimes be sanctioned in war.  But the thing is, Optimus – he frets.  He takes the guilt of the things he’s approved too much to heart.  He’ll sign off on a list of targets to be neutralised or interrogated, and then he’ll torture himself over each one, pouring through their files, staring at their photos.  He feels he owes it to his fallen adversaries, but it chips away at him.

It’s not just safer if he never finds out.  It’s also kinder.


	42. Word Salad, Part VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are snippets and short fics I wrote based on a meme I posted on Tumblr: People would send me a word, and I would develop a headcanon around it. This section is rated PG for VERY slight discussions of sex and violence; warning for discussion of ableism.
> 
> In this chapter: Drift deals with the emotional fallout of changing factions; Grimlock's new faction deals with him; both factions deal with the question of disability; Senator Shockwave makes a spectacle of himself; so do Jazz's best operatives; romance comes in many different flavours; and Prowl is bad at all of them.

**Anonymous asked: Email**

Cybertronians didn’t really have an equivalent to email, as such, before coming to Earth.  It’s not that they didn’t have the technology; if anything, it’s that their technology was more advanced, and more integrated into their frames.  When everyone has a built-in comm. line that conveys not only words, but pitch and tone and even a faint impression of the state of the other person’s EM field, there’s not a lot of use for email.  Text-only communications were reserved for very formal letters and submissions; quick, text-message-style communications that were hard to track, when comming someone would be difficult or dangerous; or books and other writings meant to be picked up and read by large numbers of people for ages to come.

Tone doesn’t matter so much in short, secret messages, and formal writing is usually carefully chosen to get across exactly the tone that the author intends.  So it was a bit of a surprise, when humanity first started using email and the Autobots eagerly jumped on the idea, that tone is really hard to get across in an email.  Many Autobots found that they kept offending one another without meaning to.  It was a godsend with the humans introduced the Autobots to their  _next_ great invention:  the emoticon.  Even if the Autobots do insist on calling them “emotibots”.

All of Bluestreak’s many, many emoticons look like a smiling Praxian >:- )

Except when he’s quoting Prowl >:-[

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Picnic?**

The Maximals couldn’t exactly tell you  _why_ they enjoy them.  Before acquiring their beast modes, they never used to have the same itch to spend time outdoors.  But now, food just seems to taste better when eaten outside.

Rhinox hauls the blankets and plates on his back, and is also in charge of keeping an optic on the  _Axalon’s_ monitors remotely, in case any Predacons or other disasters turn up.  Rattrap is in charge of food procurement.  He used to dick around with this, because rats have a much broader diet than gorillas, hawks, wildcats, rhinos, and dinos, so Rattrap would sometimes deliberately turn up with baskets of grubs or some weird fungi.  No one else wanted it?  Hey, more for him!  This stopped when Optimus threatened to have someone else find the food, though; Rattrap is vain enough about his reputation as The Guy Who Can Get You Anything that he’s willing to buckle down and take the assignment seriously, rather than have anyone thinking he  _can’t_ find their favourite food.  Dinobot is in charge of finding a secure picnic spot and then patrolling the perimeter, because he’ll get antsy if you don’t let him.  Cheetor is in charge of nothing, because it would only end badly.

Optimus is in charge of making sure the rest of these chuckleheads behave, but that’s a normal day for Optimus.

Airazor and Tigatron show up more often than not; neither of them are nuts about being in confined spaces, so the chance to see their friends outside the  _Axalon_ is welcome.  Weirder, though, is the fact that the whole gang has bumped into Terrorsaur and Waspinator out for a picnic.  The first time, there was a skirmish, although it was a bit embarrassed and half-hearted; the second time, the two groups let each other go without a fight.  Over time, the Maximals have even come to tolerate the Predacons in the same picnic spot, provided they keep to opposite sides.

For a brief period, they would even share food, until the incident with Rattrap’s Exploding Fruit Basket.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Karma**

Drift believes in it.  Or perhaps  _wants_ to believe in it.  He occasionally loses track of the line himself, these days.

It’s what he was fighting for from the beginning, after all, even if it was his highly individual, very violent version of karma.  This should be a world where corrupt oligarchs get what’s coming to them, and good mecha like Gasket don’t die in alleyways.  Your deeds should catch up with you.  The world should be just.

It’s what drives his personal quest for redemption, too.  Drift is soaked in spilled energon, from head to foot, and he believes that doing good in the world is the only way to wipe that out.  In a strange way, this is linked to how difficult Drift finds it to accept that other people value him and want him around.  After all, he hasn’t redeemed himself yet; what use is he right now?  When it turns out someone  _does_ want him, he’s stunned and grateful… but also uncomfortable.  He can’t quite process it.

His exile from the  _Lost Light_ was, perversely, almost a relief.  He’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop for so long, and here it was.  And he survived it.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Mist**

What happened to the Decepticon who fired at Smokescreen through his protective smoke shield?

He  _mist._

_…_

Well,  _Jazz_ thought it was funny.  Tsch.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Sake**

Waking up on Earth was the beginning of a Cybertronian culinary renaissance.

Seriously.  A war that had started as a clash of ideals had long since become a bloody scrap over resources that dwindled daily.  No one in either faction had been fully fuelled for millions of years, and  _no one*_ had been able to get their hands on proper flavourings for energon - nickel, cadmium, chrome flakes, mercury infusions - almost since the war had begun.  Soldiers on both sides had all but forgotten what freshly-prepared, custom-flavoured fuel tasted like.

And then came Earth, with its ridiculously abundant energy and its mineral reserves, and it was difficult not to go a little crazy.  The Decepticons still had to restrain themselves, since they were still living on stolen fuel, but the Autobots had an arrangement with the governments of Earth to harvest as much energy as they needed, and most countries were more than willing to sell them mineral ores and byproducts as well.

You have never seen anyone as excited as a half-starved Autobot looking at the prospect of  _zomg proper food_! again.

Of course, those among the Autobots who liked to cook immediately set about experimenting with these newly accessible ingredients.  Most of them were interested in getting the Earth minerals to taste as much like home as possible, but some of the more adventurous bots figured, why stop there?  They developed new confections, and a few even made mock versions of human drinks for fun.  This led to a tradition of “Earth culture parties”, with Autobots drinking energon “beer” and watching human films, usually while their human friends looked on in amusement and tried to explain this or that aspect of their planet’s culture(s).

Perceptor was taken with the fact that Japanese plum wine is almost the same colour as energon, but he found the heady sharpness of sake more appealing to Cybertronian tastes, and easier to develop into an energon cocktail.

The Autobots thought it was hilarious when Chip and Carly did the same thing in reverse - created a pink alcoholic drink that was supposed to mimic the taste and texture of energon - but they took it as a compliment.

 _*_ Well, except for a few mecha who somehow maintained trading links to the rest of the galaxy, through less-than-scrupulous means.  *cough*Swindle*cough*

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Dog**

If any of the Scavengers had ever been to Earth, they might well say that Grimlock’s behaviour is weirdly doglike.  The damage to his processor seems to have changed the way he sees the world around him:  abstract ideas like faction and long-term plans are a little too vague for him to grasp.  All he knows is the immediate situation, and whatever he’s feeling at this moment (which is always black and white, and always _big_ ; either something is wonderful or it’s the worst thing in the galaxy).  He _is_ bright, and he learns scarily quickly (as Krok puts it, he can definitely be trained), but his entire world is right here, right now.

From what little they can guess about what’s happened to him, maybe that’s the safest way, at least for now.  It’s just as well that he’s not able to dwell on the past.

His loyalty is remarkably doglike, too, and like a dog, he forms certain special bonds.  He immediately got attached to Fulcrum, who was the one who argued that they should help him, and to Misfire, who was the first to try to speak to him.  For weeks, he would follow them around:  nudging his massive beastmode head against Fulcrum’s palm, wanting to curl around the two in recharge, and growling protectively if the other Scavengers got too close.  Over time, though, he’s come to more or less adopt the others.  He and Crankcase don’t always get on - the pilot is forever chucking wrenches at him and chasing him out of areas with delicate machinery - but Spinister is a soothing presence who doesn’t demand much of him, and who’s happy to dispense audial skritches in quiet moments.

He likes Krok, too, but that’s because Krok went the traditional route.

He bribed Grimlock with treats.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Okay I'm not sure if it's been asked but "romance"?**

Ideas of romance vary a  _lot_ by citystate.

Courtship in Vos involves a lot of push-pull:  acid remarks, pretended disinterest, and teasing that borders on cruel.  From the outside, it looks downright mean, but seekers can communicate volumes with the movement and position of their wings, and can pretty easily distinguish someone signalling “go away” from someone signalling “come chase me”.  Still, Vosian romance is  _not_ for the faint of spark.

Praxian courtship, by contrast, is very slow-moving, intellectual, and formal, befitting a city renowned as a (rather old-fashioned) centre of learning and culture.  Physical intimacy doesn’t usually enter the picture until the relationship is already fairly serious.  Expect to be taken to museums a lot.

The courtship of the Towers nobility in Iacon is basically a more languid version of Vosian romance.  It’s like a competition to see which half of a courting couple can act more indifferent to the other (while also sneaking in steamy glances and teasing one-liners so the object of their affection realises they actually  _are_ interested.  Just, y’know, in a deniable way).

Polyhexians have a reputation for being hot-blooded and wildly flirtatious.  In Crystal City, they prefer the indirect approach, full of poetry and a lot of long-distance wistful sighing.

The joke about Kaon is that if you actually sit down to drink a cube with someone before fragging them, that’s romance.  If you manage to exchange more than ten words while you do so, that’s true love, and if the other mech actually pays for your drink, Pit, that’s practically a sparkbond.

There’s some truth to that, sure:  Kaon is full of warbuilds and pitfighters, and warriors don’t tend to beat around the bush when they know, far more vividly than any Towers aristocrat, that any given night might be their last.  But warriors can be a sentimental bunch, too, and there are traditionally Kaonite romantic gestures that would put all the sonnets in Crystal City to shame.  This is where you’re most likely to see lovers pledging to die fighting side by side, or one wearing the other’s token into battle.  And when a Kaonite loses their beloved, there’s no quiet, dignified grief.  They’ll scar their face, smear the vial of their dead lover’s innermost energon over their plating like war paint, and head out for revenge.

Now  _that’s_ romance.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Digamy**

( _Spoilers for Dark Cybertron.  NB - Digamy means remarriage after divorce or the death of a spouse.)_

It actually has a  _code_ _name._ And a mission reference number.  And an official chain of command, set of operational objectives, and dedicated comm. line.  Brainstorm thinks this is pushing it, but Prowl feels better if everything is arranged as clearly and logically as possible.

So Operation Digamy it is.  

Prowl is Command and Logistics.  Brainstorm is Frontline Ops.  What that means is that, each time it happens - each time one of Chromedome’s  _conjunx endura_ die - Brainstorm does his best to convince Chromedome not to wipe his memory of them.  Again.  And if he fails ( _when_ he fails), Prowl handles the cleanup.  He gets Chromedome reassigned, drops a few words in the right audials, monitors Chromedome’s communications for a few weeks to catch and block any well-meaning expressions of sympathy - basically, he makes sure that nothing disturbs Chromedome’s amnesia, and that amnesia doesn’t interfere with anything else.

Brainstorm is sorely tempted, each time, to just step back and  _let_ someone accidentally spill the beans to Chromedome.  Maybe even do it himself.  Serve Domey right, in a way, for pulling this short-sighted, damned selfish trick over and over.  But Brainstorm knows it would only end badly:  Chromedome would be traumatised all over again, and then he would wipe his memory once more to get rid of the second trauma.  And deep down, Brainstorm is worried that if he pushes Chromedome too hard, one day his friend is going to erase Brainstorm from his memories, too, to preserve his fragile peace of mind.

Brainstorm is  _over the moons_ when Chromedome finally decides to keep the memory of his (latest) late  _conjunx._ Chromedome is a mess, of course, a tormented mess under the professional shell, but at least he’s an  _honest_ mess.  And honest messes can heal.  

What with the whole communications blackout/exile from Iacon/end of the world business, though, Frontline Ops doesn’t get the chance to tell Command and Logistics that Operation Digamy has finally succeeded, once and for all.  Which is why, when Brainstorm finds Prowl after the final battle, sitting on the clifftop alone with his knees curled against his chest like a newspark, Prowl is nursing a bruised cheek and a split lip, in addition to his battle injuries.

Brainstorm gestures to the same places on his own mask.  ”Let me guess.  Chromedome?”

Prowl’s engine gives a low growl that could be agreement or a warning.  Brainstorm chooses to assume it’s the first.

"Well, what did you go and bait him about Rewind for, anyway?"

"Because I was somehow under the impression that he couldn’t understand what I was talking about,  _because I thought his memories were wiped,_ " Prowl mutters through clenched denta. _  
_

After a silent moment of very deliberately _not_ pointing out that this isn’t his fault, Brainstorm takes a bottle from subspace - one of Blurr’s best, nicked out from under Swerve’s nose when he wasn’t looking.  Prowl looks at him inquiringly.

"Hey, I figure that you lost a good friend and managed to have your ex punch you in the face today, and  _I_ found out I’ve technically been  _dead_ for months, and we both stopped the apocalypse, and therefore it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we need a drink.”

Prowl looks skeptical, but he scoots over and lets Brainstorm sit beside him, and takes a swig from the bottle, coughing.

Brainstorm leans companionably on Prowl’s shoulder.  ”Although, of course, I  _am_ a genius.  You know, just in case.”

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Disability**

As you can imagine, a society as obsessed with alt mode and function as Cybertron was before the war also had some fucked-up ideas about disability.  It was held that if you functioned outside normal parameters, then it was your duty to normalise yourself, and if you didn’t or couldn’t, that was considered shameful - whether your disability was one you were born with, one you developed, one imposed on you through empurata (which was done as a  _public humiliation,_ remember), or one you chose (as the Militant Monoform Movement did when its members opted to have their t-cogs removed).  This all linked back to the idea that your body wasn’t yours.  It belonged to the state, and existed to perform a particular function.

In that situation, deciding that your disability didn’t need to be “fixed” became an act of defiance.

The Autobots are a lot more accepting than the old order was, but it’s the Decepticons who have really gained the reputation for not giving a flying frag whether their members have disabilities.  If you can fight -  _however_ you fight, whether it’s physical or not - welcome to the ‘Cons.

Megatron likes defiance.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Godiva *the person not the chocolate**

There’s only one mech in the Cybertronian Senate brazen enough to go full-on Lady Godiva. :)

When Senator Shockwave turned up on the steps of the Senate building with his spark fully exposed, news cameras all around him, it was a deliberately shocking moment.  To bare one’s spark is to bare one’s soul, and Shockwave wanted to make the point that, from the planet’s rulers down to the very lowest of the casteless, the empties, the disposables, we’re all the same inside.  His spark pulses to the same rhythm as everyone else’s.

The thing is, to bare one’s spark is also to bare one’s naughty bits (which is exactly what Shockwave was counting on for publicity), and he was promptly arrested for indecent exposure.  Which is  _also_ what he was counting on.  Granted, he’d have preferred if the headlines were a little more, “Protest Highlights Horrific Caste-Based Abuses,” and a little less, “SEXY SENATOR SHOWS ALL!” but media attention is media attention.

And if he hadn’t gotten to chatting with the kind mechaforensics officer who’d arrested him, Shockwave would never have met Orion Pax.

(Skids organised a number of Shockwave’s students from the Academy to flash their sparks as part of a second protest against Shockwave’s arrest.  Unfortunately, everyone but Skids chickened out at the last moment, and Skids was picked up and plonked in a cell right across from his mentor.  Shockwave deeply appreciated the gesture Skids had made, all the same.  Once he stopped laughing.)

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: I know it's two words, but keeping in with disco fever: "barbershop quartet"?**

From deep inside the  _Ark,_ Jazz hums, strong and clear, to give them the key.

Casually leaning against a No Entry sign at a disused military encampment in Siberia, Mirage taps his fingers in rhythm and joins in, his voice a deeper counterpart to Jazz’s.

From the top of a billboard along the highway to Bangkok, Tracks hums his own note, smooth and confident against Jazz’s sultry purr and Mirage’s low, rich tone.  His feet kick idly against the energy drink advertisement below him.

Somewhere in the back streets of South Boston, Bumblebee transforms and adds the top note, beating out the time with his palm against a graffitied wall.

And far away, Soundwave’s audials perk up as, over a hijacked satellite feed, the four Autobots burst into song.

_Oh ma honey, oh ma honey,_  
 _Better hurry and let’s meander._  
 _Ain’t you goin’, ain’t you goin’?_  
 _To the leader man, ragged meter man?_  
 _Oh ma honey, oh ma honey,_  
 _Let me take you to Alexander’s_  
 _Grand stand brass band,_  
 _Ain’t you comin’ along?_

It lasts a minute at most, and then the three operatives in the field are transforming and speeding off, their signals scrambling, while Jazz retreats behind the  _Ark’s_ wall of encryption once again.  But Soundwave has the recording, and he dives in eagerly to decode it.  There  _must_ be a message - orders, coordinates, movements.  He looks at the pattern of the harmonics, and studies every minute deviation in pitch.  He pours over the lyrics.  “Leader man?”  Are they going to Optimus - or going to launch a direct attack on Megatron?  Could it mean a unit leader, or even a human government?  “Alexander’s” could be anything from a contact’s code name to a bar to any of a dozen cities named (or once called) Alexandria.  No, this is no good.  He converts the words and notes to numbers.  He converts them back.  If Soundwave were anyone else, he’d almost be weeping in frustration by now.

And meanwhile, the three spies are on their way to a set of coordinates they just shared - not through the song at all, but through  _the letters and numbers they were casually tapping while they sang._

Jazz knew Soundwave wouldn’t be able to resist chasing the music.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Comics**

It doesn’t take long for the Autobots to get into comics, and by “get into” I mean both “start to enjoy” and “appear in”.  (Well, come on; what comic book writer could resist  _actualfax_ giant alien robot wars?   Well, apart from Mike Costa, that is.  These things practically write themselves!)  Most of the stories start out being about generic transforming robots as a way of processing what’s happening on their planet, but as humanity learns more, the Cybertronians start to see their real factions - and then, sometimes, even themselves as individuals, under transparent false names - appearing in the pages.

A lot of the younger Autobots can’t get enough of seeing themselves in print.  They  _devour_ the ongoing adventures of  _Distortion Androids from Outer Space._ While some of their older comrades find it galling to read about their perpetually shiny, effortlessly quipping fictional counterparts when they themselves have just returned, battered and exhausted, from a particularly gory battle, the younger ‘Bots have the opposite reaction - seeing themselves as heroes is what keeps them going.

Optimus is just relieved that the comics still generally portray the Autobots  _as_ heroes.  You take part in a few battles that wreck a few major cities, and some species would take that personally.  Even if the Autobots do help clean up after.

Meanwhile, back at Decepticon HQ, Skywarp is sprawled in the middle of the common room, chuckling.  Shrapnel glances over.  “What are you reading,  _reading_?”

"Check it out."  The seeker turns the comic to show off an image of an unmistakably Cybertronian frame; its head has just exploded everywhere in an impressive gush of energon.  "These fleshling stories are hilarious!  And you want to know the best part?"  He taps the barely-visible faction badge beneath the gore.  "Autobot.  Pretty much everyone who dies in this series is a ‘Bot.  And they’re the ones who  _like_ humans.  This Jamesroberts fleshie is kinda twisted; I think I like it.”

In the corner, Thundercracker is putting the finishing touches on his first script for his own comic series:

SUPER-HUMAN!

THE SUPERPOWERED HUMAN WHO IS FROM EARTH!


	43. Word Salad, Part IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are snippets and short fics I wrote based on a meme I posted on Tumblr: People would send me a word, and I would develop a headcanon around it. This section is rated PG-13-ish; mentions of strip clubs and a tiny bit of BDSM/xeno, like you do.
> 
> In this chapter: Rewind reflects on a love finally recognised; Skyfire thinks about a love long lost; Orion Pax is just that good at being a librarian; Starscream is just that good, full stop; Bumblebee discovers the unexpected perks of his Earth disguise; and stripping on the dance floor, on the battlefield, and at the poker table.

**[arctic-hands](http://arctic-hands.tumblr.com/) asked: Are you only accepting Anons for the word meme? If not, "constellations" please. :)**

It’s common to most sentient species, this pastime of looking for shapes in the stars.  Cybertronians have quite a few, and, like humans, they often have different regional names for the same constellation.  The constellation Flamewing in Vos is known as The Torchbearer in Praxus, as The Mountain in Tesarus, and as Foe-Stalker in Kaon.

Fliers also have a whole other set of constellations - those that can’t be seen from Cybertron’s surface, but are visible along the space lanes to and from the planet.  Grounders can see these, too, of course, if they’re taking a shuttle somewhere, but they were originally identified and named by fliers.  In the early days of the war, the Autobots had no fliers at all; the Decepticons took advantage of that by creating an elaborate system of codes for locations, based off the Vosian names for those distant constellations.

Now, to digress for a moment, the thing about deep-space exploration is that you generally get to name what you discover, which includes constellations.  Skyfire and Starscream, on their many missions together, named dozens - well, Skyfire usually gave them the name that was actually recorded in their mission logs, since Starscream kept wanting to name them things like “Minibot Blowing A Phase Sixer” and “One That Also Looks Like A Spike” and “Primus I’m Bored” and “Fiery Death for Stupid Shuttles Who Wake Me Up To Go Stargazing”.  With Skyfire gone, Starscream thought nothing of including “their” constellations in the code system.  Not only the official names they registered for those constellations, but their joking, private names for them.  After all, the only other person who’d known those names was dead… right?

So many eons have passed since, and now that Skyfire is back, Starscream’s all but forgotten about using those names.  So when Skyfire recognises one in a double-encrypted message, he jumps, and opens his mouth to point it out to Perceptor…

… and closes it again.

There’s something so unnervingly intimate and wrong at once about realising that Starscream used  _their_ constellation names.  Skyfire just needs to work past the rush of emotions it leaves him with, and he’ll spill the beans to the other Autobots.

Eventually.

 

*

 

**[sephirose](http://sephirose.tumblr.com/) asked: Marriage**

Cybertronian society doesn’t really have a concept of weddings.  Marriages, yes:  there are basically two components to a marriage, the sparkbond and your status as one another’s  _conjunx endura_.  But neither is performed or declared in public.

A sparkbond is intensely private.  You might choose to share with your very,  _very_ closest friends the fact that you’ve bonded with your beloved, but a lot of people never tell.  And you’d never inquire about a couple being bonded or not; that’s the etiquette equivalent of asking, “So, have you two tried the 69 position yet?” during a dinner party.

 _Conjunx endura,_ which is loosely translated into English as “significant other” (but is more literally “lasting spouse” or “forever spouse”), is the more public component of the marriage.  It’s how you explain your role in each other’s lives to other people, including to the state (a  _conjunx_ has certain legal rights when it comes to inheritance, making decisions for a sick partner, and so on).  It’s not taboo to mention it, unlike sparkbonding, but there’s no ritual or ceremony involved.  You just decide mutually that that’s how you will define yourselves, and then you do.

You don’t have to be sparkbonded to decide that you’re going to be  _conjunx endura._ For that matter, you don’t have to be  _conjunx endura_ even if you’re sparkbonded - for example, if your relationship is a forbidden one, you wouldn’t give it a label to advertise it.

For a long time, under the Ratioists, the lower castes weren’t allowed to declare someone their  _conjunx endura._ Nothing would happen to you if you did, but it had no legal force.  The idea of making a lifelong commitment out of love flew in the face of the authorities’ belief that disposables were just that - disposable.  Not really people.  So if you and your  _conjunx_ had been together for eons, and they were sick in hospital?  Sorry, sweetspark; you’d have all the right to see them that a stranger would have.

That changed under the Functionalists (who put draconian restrictions on  _whom_ you could marry, but let you do it), and again during the war.  When Rewind openly wrote down Chromedome’s name on the  _Lost Light_ crew registration forms as his  _conjunx endura,_ he felt a rush of pride.  It had taken so long to get there.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Chuunibyou?**

_(From Urban Dictionary - “A Japanese slang term which roughly translates to “Middle School 2nd Year Syndrome”. People with chuunibyou either act like a know-it-all adult and look down on real ones, or believe they have special powers…”)_

On Cybertron, they call this “War Academy Syndrome”. :)

Not all graduates of the Academy develop it, but it’s common, given that the Academy is basically designed to produce people with an exquisite understanding of the theory of warfare  _and no firsthand experience with it whatsoever._   They tend to arrive on the battlefield believing that they know everything, and  _Primus,_ why are you grizzled old veterans doing it  _that_ way, when we totally learned a better way in Principles of Strategy 301?

Most of them realise pretty quickly that the theory of warfare and the reality of warfare are lightyears apart.  The ones who don’t, don’t make it.

With one exception.

Starscream walked into the Decepticon ranks with the worst case of War Academy Syndrome Megatron had ever  _seen._ The jet’s arrogance was such that pulling him down a peg or two was a tactical necessity, before the other ‘Cons outright rebelled against having him in their midst; but at the same time, he was clever enough that Megatron didn’t want to just chuck him into open battle and let him sink or swim (most likely sink).  Megatron wanted to provide a check to Starscream’s overblown ego without losing him.  So he placed Starscream at the head of one side in an upcoming wargame, figuring that the humiliation of losing would teach him how wide the gap is between theory and practice.  And that’s when the Decepticons discovered two facts:

1)  Starscream is  _almost_ as good as he thinks he is*, and

2)  Starscream plays dirty.

Two of his opponents didn’t  _survive_ the game.  Megatron might have chided Starscream for the waste, but he had to admit that he was reluctantly impressed.

*The entire story of Starscream’s life is written in the space between  _almost_ as good as he thinks he is, and  _actually_ as good as he thinks he is.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Escher**

The archivists at the Iacon Hall of Records often say that the Hall is built as a maze to represent the complexities of knowledge - how each area of learning connects to every other in a thousand unexpected ways, and how education provides a map that is necessary for navigating the twists and turns of raw information.

It’s utter bullslag, of course.  The Hall of Records is a maze because, somewhere along the way, someone decided it was more important to keep the wrong people from accessing information than it was to make it accessible to the right people.

It’s not the only defence mechanism the Hall has, and not the most sophisticated, but it’s surprisingly effective.  Want a map?  You’ll have to apply to the archivist on duty, and  _if_ you get in, every datapad you touch will be recorded and entered on your government record.  If you’re denied access, your attempt will still be logged, and mark you out as a troublemaker.  You might be able to sneak past the archivist (and the alarms), but good luck navigating the labyrinth without a map, sweetspark.  They’ll find you a week later, underfueled and wandering aimlessly around Scrap Metal Production Records 17684 - 92034.

The Decepticons have, of course, already managed to break into the Hall and access some of its records, but Megatron is still grateful for the unlimited access Orion Pax brings with him when he joins their cause.  For one thing, it means they can finally let Soundwave get on with something more meaningful than spending half his time  _finding his way around that blasted building._

 

_*_

 

**Anonymous asked: Bikini armor *I know it's technically two words but they tie together in a phrase I'm DYING to see you tackle.**

Armour, in any civilisation, is a pretty straightforward tradeoff between protection and free movement.  Either it weighs you down (but allows you to absorb massive amounts of punishment) or it leaves vulnerable spots exposed (but lets you manoeuvre fast enough that you aren’t likely to get hit).

Cybertronian armour, even though it’s living metal, works on the same principles.  On the “protection” end of the scale, you’ve got your classic tankformer:  can’t dodge a hit, can barely turn, but has the pure, unadulterated stopping power of an avalanche.  On the “free movement” end, you’ve got mecha like Whirl, whose waist is essentially bare protoform, with just a sliver of pelvic armour for modesty; or Jazz, who _looks_  like he’s more solidly built, but whose delicate armour can shift and gap in a thousand directions, making him so flexible that he could audition for Cirque du Soleil.  (Not an exaggeration.  They’d have taken him, too, if it wouldn’t have required rebuilding the theatre with a larger, heavier-duty stage.)

There’s a real difference, though, between flexible armour that allows for the maximum range of movement, and skimpy armour that’s only intended to look sexy.  The gladiatorial contests back on Cybertron used to be big business, and there were a fair few competitors who were more interested in using the exposure to become famous than they were in actually winning.  So you got a lot of over-the-top gimmicks, a lot of made-up storylines (usually in the, “I’ve had taken a secret identity as a pit fighter to seek revenge on the mech who murdered my loved ones!” vein), and a  _lot_ of skimpy armour.  We’re talking about barely-there panels; joints that give you a naughty glimpse of raw circuitry every time they turn; translucent chest plating, behind which you can just catch a glimmer of spark light.

Naturally, grizzled veterans watching the matches would complain to everyone in earshot about the slinky armour:  ”Are you seriously telling me that’s supposed to be “practical”?  You can almost see his  _spark_!” - but the audiences would eat it up.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Pointillism**

From space, Cybertron used to look like complex and beautiful islands of light, surrounded by deep seas of darkness,  But that was before the war.

One by one, the great cities fell, their glittering lights winking out as they burned, block by block, street by street.  Cybertron stopped being a world of light and dark, and became a world of acrid smoke and undying fires, everywhere.

Some of the burning was deliberate, though.  The pattern was difficult to discern from the ground.

But from space

the fires

looked

like this:

  

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Shotgun (like calling the front seat, not the actual gun)**

For the record, it’s usually considered bad form on most planets to call dibs on  _bits of someone’s anatomy._

(I mean a  _living_ someone, of course; Autobots might still think it’s a bit uncouth to claim bits of a dead person, but the Decepticons are usually fine with recycling parts of fallen foes and comrades in order to strengthen those left behind.)

So the idea of calling shotgun instantly rubs most of the Autobots the wrong way.   _No, that seat isn’t “yours”.  It’s mine!  It’s an actual piece of me!  How would you like it if I called dibs on your earlobes?_

There are exceptions, however.

The first time Spike casually yells out, “Shotgun!” when he leaps into Bumblebee’s front seat sends a strut-deep shiver through Bee.  He finds he  _likes_ the idea of being claimed.  Of being helpless underneath his human friends as they scrap over which parts of his body belong to each of them.

It’s a few years before he actually acts on that revelation about himself, but the seed is planted that day.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Ecdysiast**

(Ecdysiast - a striptease performer.)

The club was the best on Cybertron.  Not the fanciest - no thousand-shanix bottles of highgrade here - and not in the safest of neighbourhoods, but if you wanted the most cutting-edge music and the most entertaining evening in Iacon, you went to Jazz’s.  (That wasn’t the official name printed on the discreet little sign, but it’s what everyone knew it as.)

Aside from having some of the best audials for new music on Cybertron, Jazz had a rare talent for picking intriguing dancers.  Erotic dance is an old, old tradition on Cybertron, and there are even troupes that have turned it into high art.  They perform to full theatres and take their dance intensely seriously.  On the other end of the scale, there are the places on the fringes of the Dead End, where beaten-down mecha bump and grind listlessly to earn enough fuel to survive.  Jazz’s bore little resemblance to either type of place.  He picked dancers he found interesting or fun in some way that went beyond looks, and he wasn’t afraid to take chances.

Physically, there were performers to suit every taste, from big bara bruisers like Turmoil to lithe, delicate little things like Blurr (long before he became famous, back when he was trying to save up enough credits to enter regional qualifying races) to tiny twin brothers Rewind and Eject with their jaw-dropping synchronised routines.  

The dancers varied in a lot of other ways, too.  Jazz had the budget to hire only established professionals, if he’d wanted, and there were a few in his ranks (like locally famous burlesque  _artiste_ Blast Off, whose sneering disdain for his audiences only drove them wilder).  But he also branched out.  Tracks was a dance student putting himself through school (who ended up learning more from Jazz than he ever did in the classroom… and that was  _before_ the spying).  Octane kept his day job delivering fuel shipments, and only appeared as a “special guest” when he was in town between trips.  Mirage was a rich kid doing it for kicks, loving the forbidden thrill of coming straight from one of his creators’ stultifying cocktail parties and slapping on the garish paint and glitter to go onstage.  Astrotrain danced when he needed extra booze money.  Skywarp actually swapped back and forth between being a dancer and being a patron depending on the state of his bank accounts, but enjoyed both equally - he seemed to regard dancing as a sexier form of drunken karaoke, something fun he got up and did to show off for his drinking buddies.  Bumblebee actually started as a waiter, and took years before he was confident enough to even approach the pole.

No one expected the angry, haunted-opticked kid from Nyon to stick around, but he turned out to be a hit, with an intensity and theatrical panache that practically burned up the stage (almost literally, once, thanks to his particular gimmick).  He ended up headlining for more than a year under the stage name of Hot Rod.  By contrast, Jazz always thought that the effortlessly charming Skids, who so enjoyed working his way through the audience and finding some way to get under  _everyone’s_ plating, would want to stay for years to come… until one night when Skids wound up chatting to a certain patron, some senator or something, and gave notice the next day.

And then there was that curvy black-and-white.  Not the most engaging dancer, Jazz knew; the mech had a tendency to disappear somewhere inside his own head when he was onstage.  But he was graceful and expressive - and, it turned out, smart as a whip.  One night, Jazz watched the dancer coyly beckon a client over and lean close to whisper in his audial.  Not an unusual sight in the club, except for the mech’s reaction, which was to squawk in outrage, march over to his date at the bar, and slap him across the face, before asking the bartender to call the police.  As it turned out, from the stage, the dancer had spotted the mech at the bar slipping something into his date’s drink.

"Not bad, my mech, not bad at all," Jazz told his dancer as the cops led the would-be rapist away.

An awkward bob of the head answered him.  ”Standard observation technique.  It’s one of the first things we’re taught at the mechaforensics academy.”

"Studying to be a cop, huh?" Jazz craned his neck to study him fully.  "How’s about a little on-the-job training?"  And the next day, the one-time dancer showed up to work as Jazz’s head of security.

If anyone ever asks how Jazz and Prowl met, they just say that Prowl investigated a crime at Jazz’s club, and leave it at that.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Strip poker? (I'm so so sorry for all the two word prompts)**

Cybertronians have always had games that included sexualised dares, from fairly innocent stuff like Tell Me Sweetly (which is a confession game young adolescents like to play) to the extremely graphic.  Don’t go anywhere  _near_ the “atomic defrag” variation of Praxus Fold ‘Em unless everyone’s had their firewalls updated and signed some kind of insurance waiver.  (But if you do, please,  _please_ film it.)

Still, there isn’t anything exactly akin to strip poker, because “stripping” isn’t really a drawn-out process for Cybertronians.  Your panel is closed, and then it’s open.  Boom.  Stripped.

The game Sparkplug describes playing with his Army buddies sounds like so much fun, though, that Smokescreen decides he  _has_ to come up with their own version.  What finally evolves is a kind of reverse strip poker.  Everyone starts off as normal, but with a pile of ridiculously garish clothing to bet.  And each round, the losers have to split the “pot” between them, and put every last item of clothing on.  The game ends when you run out of clothing, or when everyone is unable to see their cards over the huge mounds of scarves and sweaters they’re wearing.

It’s not nearly as sexy as the Earth version, but they like it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Image in this chapter is the cover of one issue of IDW's "Autocracy".


	44. Word Salad, Part X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are snippets and short fics I wrote based on a meme I posted on Tumblr: People would send me a word, and I would develop a headcanon around it. This section is rated PG.
> 
> In this chapter: Cybertronian takes on tattoos, mods, and Halloween costumes; the Decepticons learn how to carve their names across history, in more ways than one; the brutal aftermath of the Decepticon Pillow Wars; and how Ratchet really copes with skittish patients.

**Anonymous asked: Man I love your headcanons! I laughed, I cried, I smiled. So what about "pillow fight?"**

It started with the twins, because what doesn’t?

Normally, whatever Soundwave’s brood got up to stayed in Soundwave’s quarters (or was unleashed against the Autobots, even better), but this time, Soundwave was on a solo mission, and the minicons had spent all day running around the corridors, whacking each other with soft mesh pillows.  Still, the other Decepticons probably would have only rolled their optics, except that Rumble decided he wanted to be cunning, and set a trap for his twin.  He stretched a wire across the bottom of the doorway to their quarters; it wouldn’t bother the flying cassettes, Ravage would undoubtedly see it before he tripped it, and no one else had reason to be in their rooms, which made it the perfect trap for Frenzy alone.  Any minute now, as soon as Frenzy disturbed the wire, every pillow Rumble had been able to rent or steal would descend in a fluffy avalanche directly onto the head of -

\- Starscream, who had come to see whether Soundwave was back from his mission yet.

Rumble squawked and hid as the second-in-command started to shriek indignantly from under the pile of pillows.  The cassette had just enough presence of mind to try and throw suspicion off himself by playing an old recording of the  _vwop_  noise caused by someone teleporting away.  Hearing that, Starscream finally fought his way free of the pillows and glanced around wildly for his prankster trinemate… and then a wicked smile started to spread across his face.

Starscream didn’t go after Skywarp directly.  Oh, no.  He  _schemed._ He manipulated duty rosters.  He called in favours.  He bribed Hook to install a certain inconspicuous device during Skywarp’s next checkup.  And two weeks down the line, when Skywarp touched down in a remote field, supposedly on Megatron’s orders, he was met by all five Combaticons, with a murderous light in their optics and pillows in their hands.

The poor seeker was so startled to find he couldn’t teleport - Hook’s dampener earning its keep - that the Combaticons managed to get in a dozen good whacks before their victim even thought to transform and take off.  Vortex and Blast Off tore after him, and any farmers planting early rice in the neighbouring fields would have been treated to the spectacle of a helicopter and a space shuttle chasing an F-15 and chucking what appeared to be giant pillows at it.  Skywarp was ultimately the fastest of the three, of course, but even after he lost his pursuers, Starscream’s laughter over the comm. still followed him.

And from there, it was  _on._

Decepticons fight dirty, and they fight to win, even in a game where “winning” means smacking your opponent with a soft, fluffy object and running away.  The Pillow Wars of 1987 lasted for  _months._ The  _Nemesis_ became a hotbed of feverish plots and counter-plots. There were dozens of sub-factions.  Alliances were formed and broken; sneak attacks were staged in the night; elaborate traps were designed.  Since the key was to catch someone unawares, bribing people who hadn’t been involved in any faction so far to attack your enemies for you became standard.  Suddenly, you weren’t even safe around your allies.   _Anyone_ could be the harbinger of your fluffy, comfortable doom.

The war raged until the day that - and no one ever found out who’d convinced him to get involved, or  _how_  - Megatron himself, while issuing orders in the command centre, unsubspaced a pillow, casually strolled over to where Thundercracker was on monitor duty, bopped him soundly on the head, returned to his position, and kept talking.

Things tapered off after that.  Mostly because no one would ever be able to top it.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Treats**

Quite a few Cybertronians have what humans would think of as a “sweet tooth”.  They’re fond of the intensely sweet, simple, not-exactly-good-for-you flavours that newsparks typically love.  The taste isn’t quite what we’d recognise as sweet or sugary ( _definitely_ not sugary - sugar in a fuel tank is a disaster), but the effect on the mind and the mood tends to be the same as in humans.

Ratchet, for all that he lectures the others on not overdosing on sweets, is one of the worst offenders.  He adores treats.  It was a lot worse back on Cybertron, when he had a regular practice and patients who would bring him things they’d baked.  The war limited the availability of sweets pretty sharply, but now that they’re stationed on Earth and resources are abundant, Ratchet has a hard time resisting.

Wheeljack knows it’s been a bad day if he comes to the medbay and Ratchet is there, staring off into space, methodically munching his way through the entire jar of treats he normally gives the younger soldiers as rewards when they have to get injections.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: (I hope nothing similar has been done) chirography**

Cybertronians don’t handwrite things.  It hasn’t been necessary for millions of years, to the point where no mech alive was ever programmed with the ability.  You input things on a computer, or a pad, or a personal device.  You don’t replicate the symbols with your hands.  Why would you?

The thing is, not all mecha were programmed with the protocols to be able to read or type written language at all.  If you’re mid-caste or above, you undoubtedly have them, but many labourers were never intended to be able to write.

So when they started to teach themselves, as an aid to memory (which any mech programmed with the skill originally wouldn’t need), they would write out or carve out the letters by hand.

What started as a method of learning became an act of rebellion.  When the Decepticon slogan, “You are being deceived,” first appeared scrawled across buildings, what terrified people wasn’t the words or the defacement - it was the fact that it was  _handwritten._ That triggered something deep in people’s processors.  It felt wrong; it felt  _unnatural,_ and it was like some already-scary brute creature had just become intelligent… and angry.  In human terms, it was the moment that the raptors learned to operate door handles. _  
_

Rodimus carving words into his desk is a very old habit - a holdover from his own time in the underground rebel movement.

 

*

 

**[hauntedmyth](http://hauntedmyth.tumblr.com/) asked: *Takes a deep breath* I don't think you're still doing this but I HAVE to see anyways: athazagoraphobia (with a loving push towards Decepticons with it).**

( _NB for everybody else - fear of being forgotten._ )

The mechs in the mines don’t even have names.

They’re born into the dark, and they die in the dark, glimpsing daylight in between just long enough to be corralled, examined, and issued with numbers, work batch codes, and team assignments - then it’s straight back down.  No one on the surface has the faintest idea who they are.  Most don’t even realise they exist.  They die in the dark, suddenly, often in ugly ways, and without ever being seen, much less remembered.

Is it any wonder that so many of them took to the pits?  It was like nothing they’d ever experienced before.  Well-known gladiators had posters splashed all over the walls, and pasted up in the alleyways of the glittering cities on the surface.  They were interviewed, photographed, cheered.  The most famous of all sometimes had statues erected (out of disused scraps and low-quality slag, but statues all the same) near the entrances to the stands, and those statues stayed standing long after the mechs who inspired them had died and been melted down in turn.  The danger was intense, but not much worse than mining, and far more exciting… and you could have a  _name._ Not only could you choose it for yourself, but if you won, people would be screaming it.  And even if you died, it wouldn’t be forgotten in the dark.

Is it any wonder that the mecha who rose from those pits to become the Decepticons want to burn their names across the sky?

But wanting to be remembered is not quite the same as fearing to be forgotten.  Some of the Decepticons have that, as well.  Hook is one of the worst.  It’s what lies underneath his stuck-up pride; he’s afraid that if he stops telling people, over and over, how great he is, they won’t remember him.

That was one of the most comforting and most terrifying things about becoming part of a gestalt, for him.  Once you’re part of that whole, you disappear.  No one talks about what Hook did in that battle:  they talk about the Constructicons, or they talk about Devastator.  It’s possible that no one will remember, in the years to come, the names of the mechs that made up the combiner.  And that scares him.

On the other hand, being part of a gestalt team means that you’ve instantly got five other sparks latched onto yours - people who know what you’re doing and feeling at every moment, and who would be in  _agony,_ physical as well as emotional, if anything happened to you.

Unless Hook ends up being the last of them (and he doesn’t like to think about how much that frightens him), he won’t be forgotten.

 

*

 

**[cartoonfan](http://cartoonfan.tumblr.com/) asked: If you haven't gotten this for the word meme yet, tattoos.**

The Autobrand isn’t an actual brand, the way the Decepticon brand is.  It’s more akin to a tattoo.  It isn’t agonising to get, but it does sting.

Deliberately, really.  If you can’t handle the pain of a tattoo, battle probably isn’t for you.

Some fighters on both sides also get tattoo-like markings (paint injected under the surface metals) to commemorate battles, kills, or lost friends.

 

*

 

**[abucketofprotons](http://abucketofprotons.tumblr.com/) asked: Headcanon-prompt: Costume-competition. (The hyphen makes it one word. >_> )**

The Festival of Mortilus is unique, in that it’s the only time of year when Cybertron  _isn’t_ one giant costume competition.

You see, clothes are the privilege of the higher castes, and even among those castes, the division of rank is strict - just try going outside in a cloak of a colour or fabric designated for those higher in rank than yourself, and you’ll be socially shunned at best.  At worst, the Senate’s secret police might decide you’re looking a little seditious.  Most mecha have no legal right to wear clothing at all.

That is, except on the Festival of Mortilus.

It’s an ancient tradition, one that predates the caste system.  On Earth, costumes are often used in ceremonies to ward off evil spirits.  On Cybertron, it’s the Death-Bringer himself you’re dressing up to repel.  Scary costumes so that Mortilus will be afraid to take you; garish costumes so that he’ll get confused; sexy costumes so that he’ll be so smitten with your beauty that he won’t have the spark to kill you; masks and cloaks and hoods to hide your true shape and identity, so that he won’t be able to find you in the crowd.  The result is a wild profusion of costumes, not being weighed against one another, but combining to turn the streets into a glorious carnival.

You’d think that the Senate would have found some excuse to ban the Mortilus celebrations long ago, since the tradition encourages people to dress up and parade around as their “betters”.  But the Senators know:  you take away people’s pleasures, and they’ll turn on you.  On the other hand, if you give them just a taste - one night where they can try on the clothes and the lives of those above them, one night where they’re treated as  _equal_  - you’re allowing them to let off steam, and they’ll find their lives of service easier to bear in the morning.

That’s the theory, at least.

The Senate really should pay more attention to the gladiatorial pits, though.  Because some of the champions are starting to wear costumes… all year round.

 

*

 

**Anonymous asked: Ageism**

Ageism on Cybertron is basically another form of classism.  Cybertronians are, with the right upkeep, functionally immortal - parts can be replaced*, frames upgraded, and even spark energy jumpstarted.

That is, if you can afford it.

By the time the war started, immortality had become selective.  At one end of the spectrum were the Senators and the alt-mode-exempt intellectual classes, who could modify their frames as far as their imaginations (and wallets) would stretch, and who also never did the kind of manual labour that tends to wear bots down before their time.  At the other end were the disposables, who were worked within an inch of their lives and then discarded, without their superiors bothering to repair them - or even  _refuel_ them.  Cybertronians don’t tend to disparage someone by calling them “old” in the same way humans do - they talk about them being worn down.  Obsolete.  Disposables would get that way after a few weeks; aristocrats would probably never get there, no matter how long they lived.

Things have largely evened out because of the war - access to upgrades is now by tactical necessity rather than caste, and everyone’s a little worn down after millions of years of combat.  ”Old-timer” has become a term of respect, since the default went from “immortal” to “lucky to survive the first few hours of existence”.  Still, you sometimes encounter some deep-seated prejudices regarding “obsolete” frames.  (And people who exploit those prejudices.  Mecha like Tarn are quick to pass off their additions this way.  So he burned through another t-cog; so what?  Are you telling him his parts are  _worn out_?  Are you trying to dictate when he can receive a replacement?  Fascist!)

*Some people would say that the exception to this is a body part with a particular talent, like a skilled pair of surgeon’s hands - it’s widely believed that such parts cannot be adequately replaced.  However, others argue that that’s just a subtler form of anti-cold-construction prejudice, making out that forged mecha are “better” and that science can’t duplicate a forged limb.


	45. Times New Romance (Prowl x Minimus Ambus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based on an anonymous question on Tumblr - a little snippet of what a pre-war ProwlxMinimus Ambus ship might have looked like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've decided the name of this ship is AUTOCOWRECK.

“Oh, Primus, he’s here.”

“Who?”

“ _Don’t look!”_

“… What, you mean that minibot with the moustache?  So what?”

“That’s  _Minimus Ambus_.”

“What, Ambus as in Dominus Ambus?  Pit, he really got the short end of the family stick when it comes to looks.  Heehee, ‘short’.  But seriously, what are you… Prowl, are you blushing?”

“No!”

“You  _are._ You’re blushing!  What’s so special about Tiny over there?”

“He…  _mumblemumblemumble_.”

“Sorry, didn’t catch that.”

_“He invented my favourite font, all right?”_

“You cannot be serious.”

“*sob*   _It’s so elegant and efficient!”_


	46. Rough Nights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A handful of very different characters, with one thing in common: they're no strangers to dark nights of the soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a headcanon meme on Tumblr - one of the questions involved a "rough night" headcanon.

_First Aid_

Aid has a lot of bad nights, now.

They hardly ever happened on Delphi.  Maybe because he knew he had to keep the other two together, when Ambulon had his nightmares and needed someone to come in and stroke his sides and reassure him that he was a separate being - not an appendage, not bound forever to four other mechs, with no idea of where he ended and they began - or when Pharma had his enraged, drunken nights that inevitably ended with him going outside and screaming into the snowstorm, and someone had to talk him down before he took to the air, because then there was no getting him back.  Somehow, making sure they never lost themselves kept Aid together with  _himself._

But now, he has trouble sleeping; it’s somehow colder in space than it was on Messatine, and no one here needs him, not like that.

On those nights, he likes to take down his badge collection, one by one, and cradle them, and trace the familiar lines.  Sometimes, he goes to sleep with one tucked up near his mask.  And if he’s lucky, he dreams of Agent 113.

***

 

_Rung_

Rung finds it difficult to take his own advice about rough nights.

He tells his patients to go seek out a friend to talk to when they’re having a bad night, but he himself hates to impose.  He tells them to go look at the stars and let the beauty of nature soothe them, but the stars, for some reason, always make him feel impossibly  _old,_ even though everyone else says they tend to make them feel young and small next to the vastness of the cosmos.*

* (not a fat joke about everyone’s favourite shuttle)

He tells his patients to stay away from bars when they’re feeling down or desperate, but that’s often where he ends up.  He doesn’t go to drink, he reminds himself; it’s just that that’s where people are, and for all Rung’s habitual solitude, on rough nights, he wants company.  Or he at least wants to be around people, even if they’re not specifically spending time with him.

People wonder (or, at least, they would if Rung made a habit of confiding in anyone about his darker times) how bad Rung’s bad nights could possibly be.  After all, he wasn’t a soldier.  They forget that, as a therapist before and during the war, he’s seen and heard things that would put all Chromedome’s borrowed-memory-nightmares to shame.

***

 

_Prowl_

Prowl never admitted to himself, during the war, that he had rough nights.  It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to own the weakness; he acknowledged when he needed fuel or recharge (though he never really got enough of either), and he could acknowledge, in the abstract, that every soldier had some darkness pinging around their processor, and that it would occasionally take hold for a while.  But to admit that tonight was a bad night would mean, if he were honest, admitting that most of them were bad nights; maybe all of them.  And that way lay a deep, dark hole he wasn’t sure he could ever climb out of.

He can’t hide the rough nights now, though.  He’s got five other mecha sharing his headspace, and as much as he tries to throw up boundaries between his mind, his  _will,_ and theirs, feelings are harder to police.  They tend to seep through the cracks.  And so, on the broodier nights, when he finds himself staring at a screen without reading it while his thoughts turn to the war, or Optimus, or Tumbler, he inevitably hears one of them ringing his door chime before long.  And then another, and another, until they’re all piled up outside his quarters, begging out loud and in his head for him to let them in.

 _Please, boss._ The plea isn’t new to him.  A surprising number of his closest subordinates have come to him over the years, wanting to offer comfort or a way to take his mind off his responsibilities, if only for a few hours.  Skids and Getaway; Mirage and Tracks; Bumblebee; Jazz; Arcee; Sideswipe; even Springer, back in the day.   _Please, boss.  I can help._ He’s never accepted - never let himself accept - but with the Constructicons, he’s getting treacherously close.

It’s all but  _killing_ the Constructicons, that their gestalt leader is broadcasting pain, but won’t let them go to him.  They’ve tried reason and they’ve tried the sheer emotional avalanche of their concern and affection, but they’ve only managed to push him further away.  Now they’re really starting to panic.

***

 

_Rewind_

Rewind has a lot more rough nights now, following the massacre on the LL2.  It’s getting to the point where the balance has shifted, and Chromedome is comforting him after a nightmare more than the other way around.  Usually, what Rewind wants after he wakes up in a panic is to be talked to until he calms down (by his conjunx, if at all possible), but not always.  Sometimes, Chromedome will find him a frustrated ball of anger and energy, burning to put the world to rights - not necessarily to avenge the slaughter, but to do something that will give his survival meaning, and make him feel less powerless.  On those nights, Chromedome can do very little except sit and listen to him as Rewind paces and rants, usually until they need to get up for the day.

***

 

_Drift_

Drift is no stranger to rough nights.  A large swath of his life is the story of his trying to find ways to cope with them - starting with the drugs, then, when he was trying to come off them, Gasket’s company in the middle of the night.  But there’s always been one method of comfort that worked better than all the others, one sedative that has always helped him sleep like a sparkling.

Violence.

As a Decepticon, Drift always slept easy the night after a battle, even if his wounds were aching; it quieted something deep inside him.  When battle wasn’t available, he’d volunteer for a raid, or sign up for a sparring session, or, sometimes, go trawling for a fight or a rough frag.  Any of those would purge the jittery extra energy, and give him the sense of calm and purpose he needed.

Meditation - and sometimes sparring, or racing - has mostly taken the place of fighting on rough nights, but it’s not the guarantee that fighting was.

***

 

_Chromedome_

Chromedome has a lot of coping mechanisms that are… not exactly healthy.  Injecting others; injecting  _himself_ ; drinking himself unconscious on Nightmare Fuel; listening to sad recordings or memories obsessively in the dark… the list goes on.

One of the healthier ways he comforts himself is to look out at the stars and make up stories about them.  Not just look for shapes, the way Rewind does - although he often riffs off what Rewind invents - but come up with elaborate tales about the beings who live on the planets around those faraway dots of light.  It used to amaze Prowl when they were dating (Prowl’s never been naturally good at creating stories; his specialty is piecing together the ones that have actually happened), and after Rewind’s death, Chromedome would often weave the real-life stories from history that he remembered Rewind telling him into the made-up stories.  Nowadays, he and Rewind don’t indulge in this form of comfort so often - they’ve learned that the stars can hold terrible things.


End file.
